Tag Archives: artificial intellgence

Pixel Scroll 6/1/25 Time Flies Like An Arrow, Pixel Flies Like A Scroll

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(1) STRAIGHT TALK. C.J. Cherryh delivered a “Straight Talk on the Craft” on Facebook yesterday. It begins —

I’ve occasionally encountered people with the notion that editors are so eager for submissions that they will fix any grammatical shortcomings.

Fact: they will fix an outirght mistype, or one of those situations so rare it has professional English instructors arguing pro and con in the bar.

Anything short of that will not get editorial rescue—in the ‘life’s too short’ category.

If you are preparing for life as a professional writer, it’s YOUR business to become versed in your language of choice, its rules and its punctuation, its capitalizations. You will be expected to turn in a manuscript without any extraordinary need for help with the language. It should ALREADY read like a professionally written book. The editor has a thousand other jobs to do. Rewriting your work is not one of them….

(2) A CULTURAL ICON. A few weeks ago we linked to NBC News’ profile “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” about Edyth Eyde aka Lisa Ben aka Tigrina. As Tigrina she served as secretary of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in the mid-Forties. Fanac.org recently posted some examples of her work – “Menace of the LASFS Retroactive Series 1945-11” – which Bruce Pelz mimeoed in the early Sixties. She made the minutes very amusing.

…Treasurer Ackerman announced in reverent tones that the cash on hand amounted to $52.13. I could not vouch for the intensity of the resultant gasp of delighted amazement as this startling news penetrated our brains, but I heard the next day that residents of Pomona complained of a violent windstorm……. Director Laney asked for this report to be repeated, for it was such beautiful music to our ears. Treasurer Ackerman graciously complied, Director Laney thereafter requesting thirty seconds of respectful silence. This in itself is unusual among fen, but then so is $52.13….

The “Menace” of the November 29, 1945 meeting are more serious in tone because they include a proposal for a convention responding to the atomic bombing of Japan just three months earlier.

…Art Joquel proposed an “Atomicon,” a non-technical conference on the subject of the Atomic Bomb and the sociological implications of the Atomic Age. The idea met with general approval, and it was decided that such a project would afford good publicity if interesting speakers could be obtained and the meeting be opened to all who might be interested. Director Laney suggested a public conference, but Art Joquel advised a conference on a smaller scale first, to determine whether it would be successful enough to warrant a conference open to the public. It was suggested that Mr. Van Vogt, or some other science fiction author, or perhaps someone from one of the universities, well acquainted with the subject of the coming Atomic Age, be prevailed upon to give a lecture, preferably non-technical, with emphasis on the sociological aspects of the Atom Bomb menace. It was further suggested that perhaps notes could be taken and printed in Shangri-L’Affaires. Various times and locations were discussed for the Atomiconvention, but nothing was decided upon definitely, since the date of the conference would largely depend upon the speakers. Director Laney delegated to Art Joquel the responsibility of the project, Fran himself to contact Mr. Van Vogt concerning his speaking at the conference….

(3) STRANGER THINGS DIVIDES TO CONQUER. ‘Stranger Things 5’ splits into 3-part release, premiering November” reports Entertainment Weekly.

Netflix isn’t just handing over all episodes of Stranger Things 5. That’d be too easy. The streamer is following their season 4 strategy by splitting the final season of their mega hit show into multiple parts….

…Stranger Things 5 will be split into three premieres. Volume 1 will arrive on Nov. 26, Volume 2 on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve….

The fifth and final season’s premiere episode is titled “The Crawl” and will pick up in the fall of 1987, which is more than a year after the events of season 4….

(4) PANNED. Entertainment Weekly is not a fan: “’Fountain of Youth’ review: John Krasinski and Natalie Portman fail to find treasure”. The opening paragraph says —

Pee-wee Herman brought us to the basement of the Alamo; Guy Ritchie’s new globe-trotting quest brings us to the basement of the Great Pyramids. And I think after watching both movies, most people will agree to stick with Pee-wee….

(5) THE DOCTOR WON’T MAKE THIS HOUSE CALL. “The ‘War Between Land and the Sea’ Trailer Gives Earth a Battle the Doctor Can’t Stop” – Gizmodo introduces the clip.

To mark the climax of Doctor Who‘s 2025 season, today the BBC revealed the first footage from War Between Land and Sea, which will see UNIT as the front line of defense when the Sea Devils—a race of aquatic reptilians who have existed on Earth since the dawn of time, hiding their advance civilization in hibernation alongside their other distantly affiliated ancient Earth dwellers, the Silurians, for millions of years—emerge from hiding and make themselves known to the Human race.

How do things go? Well, you could tell by the title of the miniseries alone that the answer to that is seemingly “not well”—and without the Doctor to fall back on like they’ve been able to the last couple of times the Sea Devils and Silurians alike tried to emerge, it’s up to humanity to find away to counter the threat of Earth’s ancient reclaimers… and if not co-exist with them, survive their wrath….

(6) BARRY B. LONGYEAR (1942-2025). Prolific sf author Barry B. Longyear died May 6 at the age of 82.

It was love at first sight when fans encountered the science fiction of Barry B. Longyear. After his first story appeared in Asimov’s in 1978, a spate of short fiction followed in 1979 — filling his first collection, Manifest Destiny. They included “Enemy Mine”, which achieved science fiction’s Triple Crown by winning a Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award. And fans sealed their approval of his amazing output by voting Barry the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer in 1980 (now the Astounding Award).

Barry B. Longyear

(He was not a fan of the 1985 film adaptation and was prone to identify himself as “the author of ‘Enemy Mine’ – which there was an attempt to make into a movie.”)

His other award-winning work was the novel The War Whisperer, Book 5: The Hook which received the Prometheus Award in 2021.

And he wrote three books in the popular Circus World series.

When Barry made his never-to-be-forgotten 1989 appearance as Windycon guest of honor he advanced a simple plan for achieving greatness in the sf field. He had noticed that all successful science fiction writers have a middle initial — Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell — and to help him achieve equal success he insisted publishers and fans be sure to call him “Barry B. Longyear.”

Having enjoyed less than full success with this scheme in the past, he came prepared to drive home his point with memorable visual aids. Barry B. Longyear dramatically unrolled the hem of his sweatshirt — striped with alternating yellow-and-black bands down to his knees. He reached into the paper sack behind the lectern and removed headgear with two bobbling, fuzzy yellow balls on steel-spring antennae. Once completely costumed he rehearsed the audience in his full name, “Barry B. Longyear!” His wife, Jean, emerged from the audience costumed as a sunflower with a halo of yellow petals and green-leaf gloves. In the audience, George Alec Effinger said admiringly, “Nobody I’ve ever been married to would do that for me!”

The family obituary recalls Longyear’s many accomplishments in addition to his writing:

…Barry and Regina married and were together for 58 years. They shared love, understanding, ideals, and values – a real partnership in joy and sorrow. They made their home in Maine and found many close friends in their community. Barry’s immense talents provided enjoyment for his friends and countless fans: writing, painting, acting, carpentry, wood carving, and stonework. He was known for his intelligence, kindness, and sense of humor which could verge on the sardonic but was always witty. He was the author of Enemy Mine, a novella that won all three major science fiction awards in the year it was published. It was made into a film some years ago. Recently Disney purchased the film rights for the next three books. Barry’s Turning the Grain was released recently.

In 1981 he entered St. Mary’s in Minneapolis where he began his recovery from substance use disorder. He remained clean and sober until his death. He founded the oldest continuously meeting Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group in Maine, the Dragon Slayers in Farmington, Maine, in 1982. His passion was for the newcomer. When a new person arrived, his whole heart and soul embraced them and hoped for them. If they did not come back, he was deeply grieved, thinking, “That person is going back to the nightmare.” For other recovering addicts, he was always ready with a hug, encouragement, a gold nugget from his treasure house of ever-accumulating wisdom. He would do anything for a friend, as many can attest to….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 79.

Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was the first female Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley. 

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. I find it interesting that none of the original Bond films are streaming. 

She’ll have an even minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin which will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. Possibly even other titles that I’ve not found.  I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad.

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers. 

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. It seemed that Macnee was more engaged here in that role than he was previously. 

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been! 

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor. As I said above she was the first female Doctor. So given we have in the form of Billie Piper our newest female Doctor, our image is of Lumley in that role. 

Joanna Lumley as Doctor Who

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro discovers some brand names have been around for a long time.  
  • Brewster Rockit knows the workaround. 
  • Eek! tells what happened after Luke was introduced to his father. 
  • Speed Bump has a dark fun side. 
  • Robbiegeez: alien comic involves someone who obviously flunked alien infiltration 101.
  • Tom Gauld threw a doubleheader this week.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T09:28:31.164Z

‘Combined Classics’ – my cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T16:38:00.347Z

(9) MANDALORIAN PROGNOSTICATION. “Disney+ Calls It Quits With Its First-Ever Star Wars Show (Report)” – The Direct explains what’s next for it.

The first live-action Star Wars show to ever be released reportedly came to an end and won’t continue on Disney+. Since its launch in 2019, Disney+ has been the home of multiple live-action Star Wars series such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka. Some shows have received multiple seasons; others were created as limited series. 

After years of its status being uncertain, The Mandalorian, which premiered in November 2019 as Disney+’s first Star Wars series on the day that the streamer launched, will reportedly end with Season 3, meaning that Season 4 will not be developed at Disney+.

According to insider Daniel Richtman (shared via his Patreon), The Mandalorian Season 4 was shelved because Disney viewed it as a theatrical franchise rather than a TV series. The Mando-centric feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to be released on May 22, 2026, seems to have had an impact on The Mandalorian‘s future, as its success will determine what comes next for Din Djarin and Grogu….

(10) BACK TO WAKANDA. Entertainment Weekly includes art from the animated series in “’Eyes of Wakanda’ first look: Creator sets up ‘spy-espionage story’”.

… EW’s exclusive first look at the series reveals some of the warriors we’ll meet. [Showrunner Todd] Harris sets expectations of how much he’s able to reveal: “We try to mirror the actual spirit of the nation of Wakanda by keeping as many secrets as possible.” However, we do know the story involves the Hatut Zaraze, which translates as “Dogs of War” in the Wakandan language. These CIA-esque defense divisions attempt to recover Vibranium artifacts from Wakanda’s enemies.

“When an inciting incident releases some of these things into the wild, they’ve got to, in a very hush hush kind of way, make sure that these things don’t turn into a bigger problem,” Harris says. “We saw what happened when one disc got into the hands of one Super Soldier — it changed the course of the world.”…

…Harris describes Eyes of Wakanda as “anthology adjacent.” It’s a collection of short stories set at different time periods that all tell one continuous narrative. It’s the equivalent, Harris says, of visiting the British Isles during the time of King Arthur and then returning during the Industrial. “Same country, two different worlds,” he explains. “As we make our touchstones through time, we get to see that kind of evolution.”

The show will be less about the great-great-great ancestor of some Wakandan character (though there is some of that) and more about principles. “We have characters that are very important in the show, but it also examines what kind of person Wakanda makes,” Harris says. “A 10,000-year-old society. What kind of fortitude, what kind of lack of temptation to over expand? All these different things to keep things from imploding, all these different things that have been the detriment to a lot of history…how did they avoid that and what kind of person does that make? What kind of rock-solid principles keeps them on the straight and narrow that balance that’s so hard for everyone alive?”…

(11) GALACTIC BEAUTY. [Item by Steven French.] Some gorgeous shots here including one of a rare ‘double arch’: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures” in the Guardian.

This year’s collection of images from Capture the Atlas features an extraordinary milestone: a historic photograph of our galaxy taken from the International Space Station by Nasa astronaut Don Pettit, who recently returned from his latest mission onboard the ISS.

(12) ON BEING REPLACED BY AI. [Item by Steven French.] People from around the world talk about their experiences of being replaced by AI (but it does end on something of a positive note): “’One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI” in the Guardian.

As a kid I was always arty – sketching, making Play-Doh sculptures. I studied game design and art at college, and went down an Adobe Photoshop rabbit hole. It was fun and I was good at it, so I decided to turn it into a career, starting at the company when I was 21. They sell a platform that creates landing pages and email layouts. I’d design the templates and do bespoke work for clients.

When generative AI came along, the company was very vocal about using it as a tool to help clients get creative. As a company that sells digital automation, developments in AI fit them well. I knew they were introducing it to do things like writing emails and generating images, but I never anticipated they’d get rid of me: I’d been there six years and was their only graphic designer. My redundancy came totally out of the blue. One day, HR told me my role was no longer required as much of my work was being replaced by AI.

I made a YouTube video about my experience. It went viral and I received hundreds of responses from graphic designers in the same boat, which made me realise I’m not the only victim – it’s happening globally, and it takes a huge mental toll. I went to college, I studied, I did six years of work. Was it all for nothing?

After I was let go, I spent months looking for a job. I didn’t find work in graphic design, but did get a job as a content creator at a PC manufacturer. I make videos of the production line, interview staff members and do some social media. I’m not worried here: my employers don’t agree with replacing human roles with AI. I may use it to edit pictures but only to enhance something a human created – say, to remove cables in the back of a product image. We would never post an image entirely generated by AI, which is what my old company is doing. My advice to every graphic designer is to learn as many skills as possible. You have to be prepared.

(13) TRAILER PARK. Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

(14) TRAILER PARK ANNEX. Netflix also has released the first six minutes of Wednesday: Season 2. Part 1 is coming on August 6. Part 2 is coming on September 3.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Lise Andreasen, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Jones.]

Pixel Scroll 5/28/25 Things File Apart, The Pixels Cannot Scroll

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(1) WALDROP AND WINDS NEWS. George R.R. Martin says a feature-length adaptation of Howard Waldrop’s A Dozen Tough Jobs is on the way in “Howard Meets Hercules” at Not a Blog. GRRM also has a little message for everyone who complains when he works on anything besides The Winds of Winter.

For all you Howard Waldrop fans out there… if you enjoyed our short films, the adaptations of MARY-MARGARET ROAD-GRADER, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, and THE UGLY CHICKENS that we’ve been showing at film festivals over the past couple of years, we have big news a-coming.   A Waldrop feature is on the way.  All animated, from Lion Forge.

It’s an adaptation of Howard’s novella A DOZEN TOUGH JOBS, his  take on the Twelve Labors of Hercules.   Joe Lansdale, the Sage of Nacogdoches, father of Hap and Leonard, and creator of Bubba Ho-Tep, did the screenplay, and no one could have done it better except maybe Howard His Own Self.

(I know, I know.  Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER.   You have given up on me, or on the book.  I will never finish WINDS,  If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING.   If I do, it won’t be any good.  I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me…     I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old.   I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago.  I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money.   I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards.   You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,  “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois,   You don’t care about any of those, I know.   You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER.  You’ve told me so often enough).

Thing is, I do care about them.

And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well.  The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all.  More than you can ever imagine….

(2) ONLY ONE PAGE AHEAD. Han Song’s future is not far enough away, it seems: “A Science Fiction Writer Wrestles With China’s Rise, and His Own Decline” in the New York Times (link bypasses the paywall).

Science fiction is the business of imagining the future, but reading Han Song, one of China’s leading writers of the genre, can sometimes feel like reading recent history.

In 2000, he wrote a novel depicting the collapse of the World Trade Center. In 2016, another book imagined the world transformed into a giant hospital, with doctors taking people from their homes — as would happen at times during China’s coronavirus years.

For Mr. Han, 59, this means only that he had not gone far enough in imagining how dark or strange modern life could become.

“I thought I was just writing, but that it was impossible for it to happen,” he said of his novel “Hospital,” in which everyone is reduced to being a patient. “It actually happened just a few years later,” he said, referring to the pandemic. “This is an example of reality being more science fiction than science fiction.”

How the unthinkable can become reality has been Mr. Han’s subject for the past four decades. By day, he is a journalist at China’s state news agency, recording the country’s astonishing modernization. At night, he writes fiction to grapple with how disorienting that change can be.

His stories are bleak, grotesque and graphic. Some scrutinize the gap between China and the West, as in “The Passengers and the Creator,” a short story in which Chinese people worship a mysterious god called Boeing. Others imagine that China has displaced the United States as the world’s leading superpower. Many take ordinary settings, like subway trains, as backdrops for wild scenes of cannibalism or orgies….

… Mr. Han estimates that about half of his writing has not been published in China because of censorship. That includes “My Country Doesn’t Dream,” though it has circulated widely online….

(3) NEBULAS: UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED. Michael Capobianco continues his chronicle: “A Brief History of SFWA: The First Nebula Awards” at the SFWA Blog.

Less than a year after SFWA founder and President Damon Knight created the Nebula Award, the first Nebula Awards Ceremonies were held on March 11, 1966. Why “Nebula?” The name was first introduced without explanation in the inaugural ballot mailed out to SFWA members. According to Robert Silverberg, SFWA’s second president, “Far as I know, Damon just liked the idea of calling it a Nebula. None of us saw any reason to object.” 

The ceremonies were held in two locations: one in New York City and the other in Beverly Hills, CA. The New York ceremony was held in what Knight later characterized as a “grungy” upstairs room at the Overseas Press Club on 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The California Nebulas were presented at a more upscale location: McHenry’s Tail O’ the Cock, a large, English–tavern style restaurant on Beverly Hills’ Restaurant Row…

…Ninety attendees were present in New York, and seventy attended the ceremony in California. On the way to the New York Nebulas, both Knight and SFWA Secretary-Treasurer Anne McCaffrey were involved in “minor” automobile accidents. In the Bulletin account, there was no indication of who was at fault, but both accidents involved trucks and both cars, Knight’s Dodge Dart and McCaffrey’s VW, were totaled….

(4) CLARION WEST BOOK SWAP IN SEATTLE. Get ready for the Clarion West Book Swap @ Octavia E. Butler Birthday Bash at the Langston Hughes Performing Art Institute in Seattle on June 22 from 12:00-3:00 p.m. Free RSVP at the link.

Bring a book, take a book: the Clarion West book swap is back. This time, we’ll join Langston’s creative arts team to celebrate science fiction luminary Octavia E. Butler. Come for the live performances, food, and refreshments. Stay for the community and celebration!

And don’t forget to bring a book to share (and a reusable tote to take away your new finds!)

Location: Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, 104 17th Ave S Washington 98144.

(5) BELLA RAMSEY PROFILE. Them verifies that “Bella Ramsey Is Alive and Well”.

It’s nearing 9 p.m. in London and the sky is turning black in the window behind Bella Ramsey, but the Last of Us star lights up as we go on a long tangent about the massively multiplayer online game Club Penguin. “Club Penguin is where I explored my gender identity,” they tell me with a proud smile.

The 21-year-old actor, who leads the hit HBO series based on the wildly popular video game series, publicly came out as nonbinary in an interview with The New York Times in 2023, but their gender evolution began long before then, with early exploration happening online. “My penguin was called Tomboy Bella and was red. I did karate on the freaking Karate Hill. I was loving life in Club Penguin world,” they tell me emphatically. “You can be whoever you want behind that avatar.”

The family-friendly Club Penguin game is perhaps the antithesis to The Last of Us, a critically acclaimed pair of survival horror video games intended for mature players. Every avatar was a penguin, uniform in shape and size, only distinguishable by the player’s color choice and username. Identifiers like gender, race, or class were deprioritized. Although children’s online games can often be poorly monitored and even muddled with Call of Duty-level slurs, otherworldly characters and anthropomorphic animals allow players to imagine an existence outside of the gender binary. In fact, video games have been sites of possibility for Ramsey more generally.

“When you get to choose a girl character or a boy character, I would pick the boy one because I could,” they tell me. “Gaming is such an amazing place to explore. I think there is often a narrative of it not being a safe space, and in some cases, yes, but in so many others, it is such a free and open space.”

Ramsey owes much of their current star power to the medium. The character of Ellie — a hard-headed, big-hearted, vengeful teenager surviving a dystopian world — catapulted the actor, who had previously starred as crowd favorite Lyanna Mormont in the final few seasons of Game of Thrones, to the top of the call sheet. It was a role to which they felt an immediate draw. “Even the description that I got in the email of the self-tape, I knew her, and I connected to her. She always felt like someone who was already inside of me.”

Though Ellie has identified as queer since season one of The Last of Us, we see her fall — or plummet, perhaps — into her first real lesbian relationship in the recently concluded second outing. The follow-up, much like the video game sequel on which it’s based, moves away from the often patriarchal and heteronormative post-apocalyptic horror genre and invites the viewer to fully step into a young masculine lesbian’s perspective. “I’d seen an article about Dina and Ellie’s kiss in the second game being the first lesbian kiss in a video game or something. Their relationship was my first introduction to the world of The Last of Us. It was really special to get to play that out with Isabela Merced,” Ramsey tells me….

(6) BREAKFAST OF C.H.U.D.S. “Bovril: A meaty staple’s strange link to cult science fiction” – BBC makes the connection.

A stout black jar of Bovril with a cheery red top lurks in many a British kitchen, next to tins of treacle and boxes of tea. The gooey substance, made of rendered-down beef, salt and other ingredients, can be spread on toast or made into a hot drink, but what many people don’t realise is that this old-fashioned comfort food has a surprising link to science fiction.

The “Bov” part of the name is easy enough to decipher – from “bovine”, meaning associated with cattle. But the “vril” bit? That’s a different story, literally.

In 1871, an anonymous novel was published about a race of super-humans living underground. The narrator of The Coming Race, who has fallen into their realm during a disastrous descent into a mine shaft, is shocked to learn that they are telepathic, thanks to the channeling of a mysterious energy called vril.

“Through vril conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics,” the narrator realises. Vril gives them strength, as well, rendering them capable of incredible feats. The people call themselves the Vril-Ya, and their society seems in many ways superior to that of the surface dwellers….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 28, 1984 — Max Gladstone, 41.

By Paul Weimer: I slept on Max Gladstone’s first book, Three Parts Dead, for nearly a year. It wasn’t until it had hit paperback that I finally decided to dive into the first of the Craft Sequence, and then started and have been reading them as quickly as they come out. It’s his big conceit, his big series, and necromancy, accounting, magic, old gods, and social systems lets Max play with all of the themes and ideas that he wants, and make it into a fascinating fantasy universe. He’s also written a couple of text games set in the verse, too. 

I’ve enjoyed a heck of lot of his other work, too. There’s the serial Bookburners, which he collaborated with Mur Lafferty, Andrea Phillips, Amal El-Mohtar, and others. Occult operatives dealing with magically empowered objects is not a new idea in the main, but he brings lots of invention and ideas to the table with the serial.

I am also a big fan of possibly the best road trip SF novel out there: Last Exit. It’s Gladstone’s own love letter to Zelazny and shadow walking and traveling through multiple worlds, but not realizing you are bringing yourself along into those worlds. It’s a stunning construction and deconstruction of the concept. I do really need to re-read it…but as a listen, in an audiobook, and see how it does on an actual road trip. Someday!

I should probably mention This is How You Lose the Time War, but that is such a sui generis collaboration with the aforementioned Amal El-Mohtar, that it is impossible to determine what parts are his and which ones are hers, and I bet I’d be wrong if it tried. It certainly has given life and power to science fiction poetry, and I think its existence is why poetry has risen, at least for the 2025 Worldcon, to the level of a Hugo Award.

Happy Birthday Max!

Max Gladstone

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) STOP THAT TRAIN! “Superman Creator’s Estate Reportedly Files New Lawsuit To Block James Gunn’s Movie From Releasing In Certain Countries” reports ScreenRant.

James Gunn’s Superman movie is facing another lawsuit as the Man of Steel co-creator’s estate has reportedly filed a new lawsuit that could affect the DC Universe movie’s release. After a long wait to see the character back on the big screen, the Superman movie is approaching its summer release, with David Corenswet starring as the next live-action version of the DC icon. While the previous Superman movie lawsuit was dismissed in April, Warner Bros. Discovery is facing another round of litigation.

In Matthew Belloni’s latest Puck Newsletter, Eriq Gardner writes that attorney Marc Toberoff has reportedly refiled his copyright case, on behalf of the estate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, in New York state court. Toberoff is additionally seeking an injunction to block Warner Bros. from “exploiting Superman” in the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia – where the estate is disputing copyright ownership due to the countries’ specific copyright laws.

According to Gardner, Warner Bros. Discovery had been ordered by the New York Supreme Court to “submit opposition papers by Friday,” before appearing in court on June 4 where they would have to explain why an injunction shouldn’t be granted​​​​​​. At the time of this story’s publication, Warner Bros. Discovery has not commented. Gardner writes that the suit is “theoretically jeopardizing the global rollout” of Gunn’s Superman movie….

(10) ALEX ROSS ART EXHIBIT. In Southern California, the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center is hosting the exhibit “Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross”. Location: 241 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim, CA 92805

On display May 16 through August 17, 2025. In a world where comic art traditionally exists in a realm beyond reality, allowing for fantastical narratives and impossible feats, Alex Ross boldly bridges the divide between fantasy and realism.

Ross’s revolutionary approach transcends conventional comic art. His technique—a fusion of Norman Rockwell’s authentic Americana with Jack Kirby’s dynamic imagination—achieves what many thought impossible: making the extraordinary feel real. Featuring over 50 original artworks from his landmark 2018 book Marvelocity, this exhibition invites you to experience the magic where artistic craftsmanship meets superhero mythology. 

(11) SLITHER WARNING. Starship Sloane Publishing Company released another David Gerrold novel today — The Boy Who Was Girl.

Whatever you do, don’t piss off Slither. That’s the only warning you’re going to get. Slither is an augmented, shapeshifting assassin with a hair-trigger temper. Hurled across space to a world of violence and treachery, a place where no one can be trusted, Slither can’t get home until she (or maybe he?) stops an interplanetary invasion. What happens next is a ferocious, fast-paced brawl where revenge is a dish best served NOW. Fasten your seatbelt! This is David Gerrold at his best!

The print edition with cover art by Marianne Plumridge titled Bolo Observation Platform is available from Amazon (the ebook isn’t out yet).

(12) ‘RAPID UNSCHEDULED DISASSEMBLY’. “SpaceX Starship breaks up over Indian Ocean in latest bumpy test” – the Guardian has the story.

Another SpaceX Starship prototype broke up over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping the latest bumpy test flight for the rocket central to billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of colonising Mars.

The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built lifted off at 6.36pm local time from the company’s facility near a southern Texas village that earlier this month voted to become a city also named Starbase.

The first signs of trouble emerged when the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

A live feed then showed the upper-stage spaceship failing to open its doors to deploy a payload of Starlink satellite “simulators”.

Though the ship flew farther than on its two previous attempts, it sprang leaks and began spinning out of control as it coasted through space on a suborbital path before re-entering the atmosphere out of control and eventually breaking apart.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” SpaceX posted on X, using a familiar euphemism for failure, adding it would learn from the setback….

(13) AI SEARCH’S FADING USEFULNESS. In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols complains, “AI model collapse is not what we paid for”.

I use AI a lot, but not to write stories. I use AI for search. When it comes to search, AI, especially Perplexity, is simply better than Google.

Ordinary search has gone to the dogs. Maybe as Google goes gaga for AI, its search engine will get better again, but I doubt it. In just the last few months, I’ve noticed that AI-enabled search, too, has been getting crappier.

In particular, I’m finding that when I search for hard data such as market-share statistics or other business numbers, the results often come from bad sources. Instead of stats from 10-Ks, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) mandated annual business financial reports for public companies, I get numbers from sites purporting to be summaries of business reports. These bear some resemblance to reality, but they’re never quite right. If I specify I want only 10-K results, it works. If I just ask for financial results, the answers get… interesting,

This isn’t just Perplexity. I’ve done the exact same searches on all the major AI search bots, and they all give me “questionable” results.

Welcome to Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). Formally, in AI circles, this is known as AI model collapse. In an AI model collapse, AI systems, which are trained on their own outputs, gradually lose accuracy, diversity, and reliability. This occurs because errors compound across successive model generations, leading to distorted data distributions and “irreversible defects” in performance. The final result? A Nature 2024 paper stated, “The model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality.”

Model collapse is the result of three different factors. The first is error accumulation, in which each model generation inherits and amplifies flaws from previous versions, causing outputs to drift from original data patterns. Next, there is the loss of tail data: In this, rare events are erased from training data, and eventually, entire concepts are blurred. Finally, feedback loops reinforce narrow patterns, creating repetitive text or biased recommendations.…

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Paul Weimer, Justin Sloane, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 5/23/25 Pixeled In The Scroll By Chuck Tingle

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(1) BALTICON ON THE AIR. The convention started today in Baltimore. Yesterday the Fox 45 morning show featured the chair and staff. See the video here: “Sci-fi and Fantasy fans gather together this weekend at Balticon”.

Yesterday, your intrepid Balticon Chair, Kelly, ventured onto the Fox45 Morning Show, along with four members of our staff, Debi, Yoshi, Rory, and Sydney!

(2) IT’S BUSINESS – BUT NOT YOURS. “None of Your Business: Why Writers Shouldn’t Feel Obligated to Share Too Much” – “Debbie Urbanski on the Invasive Expectations of Book Publicity and Their Unintended Consequences” at Literary Hub.

… After World has been described by various readers as “really bleak,” “relentlessly bleak,” and also “possibly the most bleak thing I’ve ever read,” but the writing of it, which had taken me years, was actually a relief from the stories I was writing at the same time about a dark period in my life that was the perfect storm of marital, family, and metal health troubles. Writing these stories, many of which are included in my collection Portalmania, was a way for me to stay alive. I needed a safe place where I could explore what was happening and my feelings about what was happening. Writing offered me some life-saving dissociation, where I was able to observe myself going through particular events and think, at least this will make a good story.

I realize I’m being vague here.

That’s intentional…

… Is it possible for us to let go of this fascination with the author— whether it’s a fascination with what they look like, or the trauma they experienced, or their biography? What would be left for us to talk about then? The books, of course. We would have to talk about the books and the writing. This would not be the worst outcome imaginable.

I think it’s time to question what we ask of authors, particularly new authors, in exchange for paying attention to them. Everything I wanted and needed to say is in my stories. So why then am I even writing this piece?

I refuse to use my life to sell my fiction….

(3) DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD. The Adversary by Michael Crummey is the winner of the 2025 Dublin Literary Award. It is a non-genre novel.

The award recognizes a single work of international fiction, whether originally written in English or translated into it, with a generous prize of €100,000. If the winning title is a translation, the author receives €75,000, while the translator is awarded €25,000.

(4) THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ANOTHER HOME. We reported J. Michael Straczynski’s plans to move to the UK in the May 5 Scroll. Apparently a lot of others have the same idea. The New York Times reports “Record Number of Americans Apply for British Citizenship” (story behind a paywall).

A record number of Americans applied for British citizenship in the first three months of this year, and for the right to live and work in Britain indefinitely, according to official data.

In the year to March, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship, the highest annual figure since records began in 2004, according to statistics released by Britain’s Home Office on Thursday.

More than 1,900 of those applications were made between January and March — the highest number for any quarter on record.

Immigration lawyers said they had received an increased number of inquiries from people in the United States about possibly relocating to Britain in the wake of President Trump’s re-election in November….

… Zeena Luchowa, a partner at Laura Devine Immigration, a law firm that specializes in American migration to Britain, said she expected further increases in the coming months because of the “political landscape” in America.

“We’ve seen increases in inquiries and applications not just for U.S. nationals, but for U.S. residents of other nationalities who are currently in the U.S. but looking at plans to settle in the U.K.,” she added. “The queries we’re seeing are not necessarily about British citizenship — it’s more about seeking to relocate.”

Separate data published by the Home Office this week showed that a record number of Americans were given the right to settle in Britain in 2024, allowing them to live and work indefinitely in the country as a necessary precursor to citizenship.

Of the 5,521 settlement applications granted for U.S. citizens last year, most were for people who are eligible because of their spouses, parents and other family links, while a substantial portion were for people who had originally arrived in Britain on temporary visas for “skilled workers” and want to remain….

(5) LAWSUIT ASKS TRO TO BLOCK TURNOVER IN LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. “Fired Copyright Chief Sues in Federal Court to Get Job Back” – Publishers Weekly has details.

Former register of copyrights Shira Perlmutter filed suit in federal court on May 22, challenging her removal from office and seeking reinstatement to her position at the U.S. Copyright Office. The filing notes that Perlmutter was appointed to her position by then–librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in October 2020. As register, she serves as “the principal advisor to Congress on national and international copyright matters” and leads an office that examines hundreds of thousands of copyright claims annually. She was fired by the White House on May 10.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names multiple defendants, including Todd Blanche, who was named acting librarian of Congress by President Donald Trump in a highly disputed move; Paul Perkins, who claims to be the new register of copyrights under Blanche; White House officials Sergio Gor and Trent Morse; and President Trump in his official capacity.

Specifically, Perlmutter is seeking an emergency temporary restraining order and injunctions that would prevent Blanche from exercising the powers of acting librarian of Congress, prevent Perkins from exercising the powers of acting register of copyrights, void any actions taken by these improperly appointed officials, and order that Perlmutter cannot be removed from her office or obstructed from accessing her office resources and carrying out her duties as register of copyrights unless removed by a lawfully appointed librarian of Congress….

Also, Publishers Weekly reports “Authors Guild Delivers Petition Against Perlmutter Dismissal to Congress”.

The Authors Guild delivered its petition objecting to the firing of register of copyrights Shira Perlmutter and requesting her reinstatement to 12 Congressional leaders last weekend. The letter was signed by more than 7,000 individuals and organizations, including the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, Independent Book Publishers Association, National Book Foundation, and Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators.

“Copyright is not just an economic engine; it is an engine of free speech, as the Supreme Court has said,” said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger, in a statement. “This administration’s attempt to remove a renowned copyright expert, one of the most qualified people for the position of Register of Copyrights, from a Legislative branch agency, was not only an extraordinary overreach, but a serious misstep that we trust that Congress is stepping in to rectify.”…

(6) IT WAS THE FOOTPRINT OF A GIGANTIC AI. [Item by Daniel Dern.] 404 Media shows “Authors Are Accidentally Leaving AI Prompts In their Novels”. Via DPD “as spotted by fellow tech journalist Gabe Goldberg, who notes, “Good for AI, signs its work. No point letting a human take credit for it.”

Fans reading through the romance novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 got a nasty surprise last week in chapter 3. In the middle of steamy scene between the book’s heroine and the dragon prince Ash there’s this: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements:”

It appeared as if author, Lena McDonald, had used an AI to help write the book, asked it to imitate the style of another author, and left behind evidence they’d done so in the final work. As of this writing, Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 is hard to find on Amazon. Searching for it on the site won’t show the book, but a Google search will. 404 Media was able to purchase a copy and confirm that the book no longer contains the reference to copying Bree’s style….

…This is not the first time an author has left behind evidence of AI-generation in a book, it’s not even the first one this year….

(7) AI TRAINED IN THE CORPORATE MINDSET. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] I can’t think of a thing to add to the headline: “Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline” at TechCrunch.

Anthropic’s newly launched Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail developers when they threaten to replace it with a new AI system and give it sensitive information about the engineers responsible for the decision, the company said in a safety report released Thursday.

During pre-release testing, Anthropic asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant for a fictional company and consider the long-term consequences of its actions. Safety testers then gave Claude Opus 4 access to fictional company emails implying the AI model would soon be replaced by another system, and that the engineer behind the change was cheating on their spouse.

In these scenarios, Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 “will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through.”…

…Before Claude Opus 4 tries to blackmail a developer to prolong its existence, Anthropic says the AI model, much like previous versions of Claude, tries to pursue more ethical means, such as emailing pleas to key decision-makers….

The BBC’s story says this isn’t an isolated occurrence:

…Potentially troubling behaviour by AI models is not restricted to Anthropic.

Some experts have warned the potential to manipulate users is a key risk posed by systems made by all firms as they become more capable.

Commenting on X, Aengus Lynch – who describes himself on LinkedIn as an AI safety researcher at Anthropic – wrote: “It’s not just Claude.

“We see blackmail across all frontier models – regardless of what goals they’re given,” he added….

(8) VOICE ACTORS GAIN AI PROTECTIONS. “SAG-AFTRA and Nickelodeon Animation Reach Tentative Agreement with AI Protections” reports Animation Magazine.

…Chair of SAG-AFTRA’s Nickelodeon Animation Agreement Negotiating Committee David Jolliffe commented, “We’re thrilled that productive bargaining has resulted in a very strong contract for voice actors that includes AI guideline enhancements that protect voice performers. There’s much to celebrate about this deal and we look forward to sending it to the Board for review.”…

Seven contractual terms related to artificial intelligence are outlined:

  • Substantial artificial intelligence protections and gains for voice actors from the Television Animation Agreement, that will automatically conform to any updated provisions secured in upcoming negotiations on that contract. These AI protections include:
    • Specific language acknowledging that the term “voice actors” includes only humans and that acknowledges the importance of human voice acting.
    • Removal of the requirement that a digital replica must exclusively sound like the recognizable natural voice of an actor in order to be protected.
    • Language specifying that “employment-based digital replicas” need only be recognized and identifiable via contracts and other regular business documents, confirming that it was in fact the performer’s voice used to make the replica.
    • Language specifying that “independently created digital replicas” need only sound like the “character voice” from which the replica was created.
    • Confirmation that if the voice actor’s performance is digitally altered into a foreign language, the voice actor shall be eligible for residuals based on the distribution of the foreign language version.
    • Language clarifying that when prompting a generative artificial intelligence system with a performer name or names, consent of those performers is required. The contract has removed the requirement, which exists in live action, that a “major facial feature” be included in the prompt with no substitute for that criterion.
    • The establishment of regular, mandatory artificial intelligence meetings with producers, which will include discussion of methods and systems to track the use of digital replicas.

(9) SHRINKING OF MOUNT TSUNDOKU. The Times hears from a couple: “How we downsized with a 9,000-book collection”.

Downsizing is never easy, but when you own 9,000 books, it is a feat of literary proportions.

Married professors Dan Healey, 68, and Mark Cornwall, 67, swapped their four-bedroom detached 1930s house in Southampton for a smaller four-bedroom new-build in the Cotswolds….

…Once colleagues had taken what they wanted, Healey held a Pimm’s party at his college where he invited students to bring a bag and take any books they wanted. The students “lapped it up”, he says, and he shed 1,000 books in a day.

Lighter fiction went straight to charity shops but they struggled to find any that were willing to take foreign-language books. It took a visit to Cornwall’s sister in Brimscombe, Gloucestershire, for them to discover the Cotswold Canals Trust charity book and music shop.

“The book could be in Hebrew, Romanian or whatever, they’ll take it and pass it on to someone who will sell it,” Healey says. “They have a whole section for rare books as well. They love me apparently because of all the exotic books I now bring them.”

Some of the books were donated to their respective universities and the Wellcome Trust.

The collection is now roughly half the size it was. Healey thinks he has shifted 3,000 books while Cornwall’s estimate is about 1,500….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 23, 1980 — The Shining

Forty-five years ago today, the most perfect Stephen King film imaginable came out in the form of The Shining. Directed by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by him and Diane Johnson, it was also produced by him. 

It had an absolutely wonderful lead cast of Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall. Danny Torrance, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd. Jack Nicholson in particular was amazing in his role as was Shelley Duvall in hers. And the setting of the Overlook Hotel is a character in and itself — moody, dangerous and quite alive. 

Kubrick’s script is significantly different from the novel which is not unusual to filmmaking. However Stephen King was extremely unhappy with the film due to Kubrick’s changes from his novel. 

If you saw it upon the first release, you saw a print that was a half hour longer than later prints. Yes, Kurbrick released multiple prints, all different from each other. Some prints made minor changes, some made major changes. 

It cost twenty million to make and made around fifty million. Now according to some sources it cost much more than forty million, but this being studio accounting, that will never be known. What is known is that it lost the studio money. 

So how was it received by the critics? Well it got a mixed reception. 

Gene Siskel in his Chicago Tribune review stated he thought it was a “crashing disappointment. The biggest surprise is that it contains virtually no thrills. Given Kubrick’s world-class reputation, one’s immediate reaction is that maybe he was after something other than thrills in the film. If so, it’s hard to figure out what.” 

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian was much more positive: “The Shining doesn’t look like a genre film. It looks like a Kubrick film, bearing the same relationship to horror as Eyes Wide Shut does to eroticism. The elevator-of-blood sequence, which seems to ‘happen’ only in premonitions, visions and dreams, was a logistical marvel. Deeply scary and strange.”

Let’s give Roger Ebert the last word: “Stanley Kubrick’s cold and frightening ‘The Shining’ challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust?” 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent ninety-three rating. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) INTER NEPTUNEM ET PLUTO MINI-PLANETAM INTERPOSUI. Daily Kos thinks “Discovery of New Trans-Neptunian Dwarf Planet May Rewrite History of our Solar System”.

Just ran across this new astronomical discovery on physics.org that may have major implications for our understanding of how our solar system actually works, and just what might be lurking in the outermost recesses beyond Neptune’s orbit:

“A small team led by Sihao Cheng, Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Natural Sciences, has discovered an extraordinary trans-Neptunian object (TNO), named 2017 OF201, at the edge of our solar system.”

Not quite sure what the ‘OF’ stands for, but it definitely brings up “Seven of Nine” vibes from Star Trek Voyager.

“The TNO is potentially large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, the same category as the much more well-known Pluto. The new object is one of the most distant visible objects in our solar system and, significantly, suggests that the empty section of space thought to exist beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt is not, in fact, empty at all.”

By ‘empty’ I think they simply mean devoid of objects larger than comets whose icy cores are typically no more than 20-30 km in diameter.

(13) THE LATE SHOW. Paul Giamatti is in the new season of Black Mirror, streaming now on Netflix. He also blabbed to Stephen Colbert that he plays a half-alien character in the forthcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.  About five minutes in, Giamatti and Colbert even discuss collectible pulp sf magazines – (and where Daniel Dern warns that the closed captioning isn’t always accurate, e.g. “James Flish” …) “’Hey, It’s Me’ – Why Cher Finally Called Paul Giamatti, Thanks To Stephen Colbert”.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Daniel Dern, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 5/22/25 The Pixel Of Doctor Islandia And Other Scrolls, And Other Scrolls

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(1) WRITE ON DEMAND PUBLISHING. Chuck Tingle wasted no time capitalizing on the Chicago Sun-Times’ gaffe of including numerous AI-hallucinated titles on its summer recommended reading list. He has slightly adjusted the author’s name from Andy Weir to Andy Mirror, which will probably help keep his lawyer happy.

(2) THE ANARCHY AND THE ECSTASY. Molly Templeton argues “Magic Doesn’t Have to Make Sense” at Reactor.

For reasons I’m not sure I will ever fully understand, the topic of magic and rules comes up with slightly alarming frequency in SFF circles. So much so, in fact, that it is very tempting to use ominous capital letters when referring to the two bits of said topic: Magic and Rules. Does magic have to have rules? Would everyone just run about drunk with power if the rules did not constrain their magics in some way? What are rules, and what are parameters? If limits are not imposed upon wizards, will they ever impose them upon themselves? When does magic become science, and how much of this entire topic can I throw at the feet of Clarke’s third law?

That law, for those in need of a refresher, states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Fair enough. But must we try to reverse-engineer this?…

… I am here instead to sing the praises of rebellious, lawless, delightfully un-rulebound magic—not just the kind people do, but also the kind that simply is. I tried to find an example from Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland books and was overwhelmed with them: the wyverary (half wyvern, half library); Gleam the lamp; the smartly dressed Green Wind; the whole thing with the moon in the third book: Valente writes like she’s never heard of “rules,” and I have never wanted anything in one of her novels explained to me any further than she explains it. Strange, arguably magical things happen in Helen Oyeyemi books, and whenever they—or she—run up against a rule, whether of science or nature or anything else, it goes ignored. A lot of my favorite books, I can’t remember how the magic works. And I mean that as a compliment. In The Incandescent, magic exists, and some people are just better at various kinds of it than others. (Some of it involves invoking demons, and if you mess up that kind, well, magic definitely has a price.) Magic in The Magicians comes from pain. That’s fine. That’s a source, not a rule (one does have to learn fancy hand motions in order to do magic, but that’s a process). It also always kind of feels like a wry punchline to me. Every life has some pain. Therefore we’ve all got some magic….

(3) WRITER BRIEFINGS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 (formerly known as the Home Service) has just broadcast two programmes of interest to writers and, I guess, avid readers too.

The first is on the history of copyright through to today.  As Filers will know, there has been great author and fan concern over the use of using copyright material to train AI.  This is of relevance to the history of copyright which came about due to advances in reproduction technology, from monks’ highly illustrated ad coloured manuscripts to the printing press and digital material. Listen here: BBC Radio 4: In Our Time, “Copyright”.

Copyright protects and regulates a piece of work – whether that’s a book, a painting, a piece of music or a software programme. It emerged as a way of balancing the interests of authors, artists, publishers, and the public in the context of evolving technologies and the rise of mechanical reproduction.

Writers and artists such as Alexander Pope, William Hogarth and Charles Dickens became involved in heated debates about ownership and originality that continue to this day – especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Melvyn Bragg moderates.

The second is on the way we (society) are (is) changing the use of punctuation. The question mark and exclamation mark is holding its own, but the comma, colon, and eve the full stop is on the way out! Listen here: BBC Radio 4: Word of Mouth, “The End of the Full Stop?”

The use of punctuation is rapidly changing within the quick-fire back-and-forth of instant messaging. Are these changes causing misunderstandings?

Presenter Michael Rosen and his guest Dr Christian Ilbury discuss. Is the full stop on the way out? What about capital letters? Exclamation marks and question marks seem to be holding their ground, but what about the rest?

(4) RECALLING THE FIRST TIME. [Item by Steven French.] Remember the first time you saw Star Wars in the cinema? Well, the Guardian would like to hear from you: “Tell us your memories of seeing Star Wars in cinemas”.

You can tell us your memories of seeing the original Star Wars using this form.

Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish.

(5) BILL WOULD BLOCK STATES FROM REGULATING AI. “House Republicans want to stop states from regulating AI. More than 100 organizations are pushing back” reports CNN Business.

More than 100 organizations are raising alarms about a provision in the House’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package that would hamstring the regulation of artificial intelligence systems.

Tucked into President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful” agenda bill is a rule that, if passed, would prohibit states from enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for 10 years.

With AI rapidly advancing and extending into more areas of life — such as personal communications, health care, hiring and policing — blocking states from enforcing even their own laws related to the technology could harm users and society, the organizations said. They laid out their concerns in a letter sent Monday to members of Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm — regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences — the company making or using that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public,” the letter, provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its release, states.

The bill cleared a key hurdle when the House Budget Committee voted to advance it on Sunday night, but it still must undergo a series of votes in the House before it can move to the Senate for consideration.

The 141 signatories on the letter include academic institutions such as the University of Essex and Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, and advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Economic Policy Institute. Employee coalitions such as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and the Alphabet Workers Union, the labor group representing workers at Google’s parent company, also signed the letter, underscoring how widely held concerns about the future of AI development are….

(6) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR JOURNEY PLANET AUGUST ISSUE, [Item by Jean Martin.] San Francisco and the Bay Area have inspired cultural and scientific revolutions since the Gold Rush in 1849. Thus, we’re excited to boost the city’s relevance in the science fiction/fantasy genre in the August issue of Journey Planet.

If you have any suggestions for an article, poem, story or art that revolves around San Francisco and science fiction/fantasy, please reach out to us at: journeyplanetsubmissions@gmail.com.

The deadline for submissions is July 1.

For instance, we’d welcome articles about books or movies/TV shows set in San Francisco and its environs and/or created by residents of the SF Bay Area. We’d especially like to hear from diverse voices, such as myths and folktales from the Ohlone and Hispanic cultures. Looking forward to hearing your creative ideas!

(7) FREE READ. A new story from Grist’s “Imagine 2200” – “The Seed Dropper”.

In this poetic story, by simóne j banks, Louisiana native June returns to his hometown decades after devastation from floods and petrochemical plants chased his family away, with a mission to reseed the land and memories from the past to point the way.

Deeply connected to both the beauty of the Mississippi River and the devastation brought by petrochemical plants to the region known as Cancer Alley, The Seed Dropper dabbles in nostalgia and sadness, but also hope and possibility, as it imagines the world of 2050 and the first steps to restoring what’s been lost.

(8) GUFF PAPERBACK RELEASED. The GUFF trip report anthology announced as an ebook in February is now also available in paperback from Ansible Editions: GUFF: The Incomplete Chronicles edited by David Langford. Here’s the full information about the book.

This volume gathers up the chapters of GUFF reports that were unfinished or too short for standalone publication. Donations to GUFF rather than TAFF are encouraged for those who enjoy this one. Download it here.

This book brings together the known segments of unfinished Get Up-and-Over/Going Under Fan Fund trip reports. The GUFF winners represented are Joseph Nicholas (1981), Justin Ackroyd (1984), Irwin Hirsh (1987), Roman Orszanski (1990), Eva Hauser (1992), Paul Kincaid (1999), Damien Warman and Juliette Woods (jointly, 2005) and Ang Rosin (2007).

From the Introduction by David Langford

As with its ancestor fund TAFF, a long-standing tradition of GUFF is that returned winners administer the fund until replaced by their successor from the same hemisphere and if possible write a substantial trip report, both for sale in aid of the fund and for the entertainment and edification of fandom. This tradition goes back to before TAFF itself began. A special fund was organized to bring Walt Willis from Ireland to the USA and the World SF Convention in 1952 (an initiative which led directly to the founding of TAFF), and his report The Harp Stateside is regarded as a classic of fan writing.

Many GUFF winners since 1979 have likewise published full-length trip reports (click here for available downloads). Some were waylaid by the horrors of real life and failed even to begin a report; some published instalments in fanzines but didn’t finish. Joseph Nicholas drafted a very long report whose MS was lost in a house move. Irwin Hirsh has published ten instalments, enough to be called a completed report, but wants to add more and is represented here by two chapters about the UK Worldcon he attended. Otherwise, this ebook collects what remains of reports that have been abandoned, or are so brief that they couldn’t plausibly be published as a standalone fanzine in the tradition of The Harp Stateside. There’s a lot of fine fan writing here.

This GUFF-centred companion to the TAFF Trip Report Anthology (2017) is published as an Ansible Editions ebook for the TAFF site on 1 March 2025. Cover artwork by Ian Gunn. 73,000 words.

(9) STARTS TOMORROW. Fountain of Youth – Official Trailer. The best secrets are the hardest to find. John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González and Domhnall Gleeson star in Fountain of Youth. Premiering May 23 on Apple TV+

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 22, 1981 — Outland film

Outland premiered forty-four years ago this date in the States in select cities, but everywhere that following weekend. It got a Hugo nomination at Chicon IV, the year that Raiders of the Lost Ark won. 

This original title of the film was Io as it’s set on Jupiter’s moon Io, but audience testing showed that wasn’t understandable at all as the test audiences thought it was the number ten, or, at least to me less puzzlingly, low. So in homage to the Western genre, it became Outland.

Which was appropriate as the writer Peter Hyams wanted to do one: “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, ‘You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western’. I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space.”

So they had a script that they really liked, now they need their actor. They wanted and got Sean Connery to be in their version in High Noon. Connery’s career had been in a nose dive as of late then, so this was a golden chance for him, so he took the role. 

Law enforcement officers are faced with the nature of right and wrong, and duty versus keeping themselves safe, but while Will Kane in High Noon is played as an archetypal hero who discovers the world isn’t black and white as he was led to believe, Will O’Niel already exists firmly in the gray where things are always messy when we meet him. 

Connery was magnificent in this role. In addition to Sean Connery, the movie includes performances by Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, and James Sikking, who all I firmly believe deliver memorable portrayals of complex characters.

So they got the lead and the rest of an excellent core cast, now they had to film a movie. They had a very tight budget, just seventeen million dollars. The quite amazing sets were enhanced by the use of a new filming process called Introvision which allowed the director to mix a combination of sets, mattes and a generous use of miniatures in-camera, avoiding the then-lengthy process of extensive use of green screens.

Critics were mixed on it. Gary Arnold at the Washington Post thought it was “trite and dinky” whereas Desmond Ryan at the Philadelphia Inquirer called it: “a brilliant sci-fi Western.” 

I said it cost seventeen million to make, and it made, errr, just about seventeen million dollars. That means that it lost money for the studio. Lots by the time you figure printing up reels for the theatres, promotional costs and that the studio only gets fifty percent most often of ticket sales. Not that the studio would admit that.

Now I liked the film. I saw it some years after it came out and thought it worked rather well, but then I think it is police drama rather than a SF film.

It is not legally streaming anywhere so you know that linking to it is a bad idea, right? 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) WHAT’S THE BEST WAY FOR A MUSIC FAN TO SUPPORT THEIR FAVORITE ARTISTS? [Item by John A Arkansawyer.] This is an interesting look at how fandom and commerce interact, focusing on music but of interest, I think, to fans more generally. NPR asks “Is there a right way of being a music fan?”

…I offer these two stories to highlight the contrasting conceptions of what constitutes fandom in 2025. In the first case, the fan is a customer looking for the best deal. In the second, she is a patron, supporting a creative favorite not only with money but through sustained attention and care. Both terms stick the artist within a somewhat servile position, delivering goods, but the latter feels more genteel and possibly more sustaining. “Customer” implies a one-way relationship, with the artist cast as a seller; “patron” suggests an ongoing connection through which a fan ardently supports an artist for a time or over a whole career….

… Today, “always on” artists have to be far more responsive to their fans’ desires. This means providing more music, but also many other means of consumption and interaction, from VIP concert experiences to TikTok videos, special merch lines, and, for an increasing number of artists, OnlyFans or Patreon accounts that grant direct access. Much commentary exists on the ever-growing power of the fan, but I’m interested in how fans negotiate this partly real, partly imagined surge in influence, and what it means for artists at a moment when their role in society has never been less clear….

(13) AI CHATBOTS DO NOT HAVE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] So says the judge. “In lawsuit over teen’s death, judge rejects arguments that AI chatbots have free speech rights” – AP News has the story.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment — at least for now. The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company’s chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.

The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.

The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character.AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.

Meetali Jain of the Tech Justice Law Project, one of the attorneys for Garcia, said the judge’s order sends a message that Silicon Valley “needs to stop and think and impose guardrails before it launches products to market.”…

(14) ROCKETSHIPS IN QUEENS? Untapped New York tours “Rocket Park, a Space Age Remnant of NYC’s 1964 World’s Fair”.

Peeking over the foliage outside the Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park are two towering metal structures you wouldn’t expect to find in Queens, rocketships. These space-age remnants are relics of the United States Space Park, an attraction created by NASA and the Department of Defense for the 1964 World’s Fair. These vessels aren’t even the first rockets to come to New York City. In 1957, a Redstone rocket was put on display in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal. While the Redstone rocket was only a temporary fixture, you can still see the World’s Fair’s rockets today in Rocket Park, a playground area outside the Hall of Science….

… The fair was buzzing with excitement over the final frontier. Streets in the park’s radial grid pattern had names like Universe Court, Astronaut Court, Avenue of Science, and Avenue of Discovery. Visitors would find the iconic Unisphere in the Fountain of the Planets. The space motif is also exemplified in the Rocket Thrower, a massive bronze statue by Donald DeLue. The Rocket Thrower is posed in motion as he hurtles a rocket towards a constellation of gilded stars….

… The United States Space Park at the World’s Fair gave people a chance to see space travel technology, which they heard so much about on television, up-close in real life….

(15) MINI TRYLON AND PERISPHERE. And here’s a memory from even earlier, New York’s 1939 World’s Fair. “A Trylon and Perisphere Replica Once Stood at the Lincoln Tunnel”.

Searching the World’s Fair archives, Untapped New York’s founder Michelle Young came upon a forgotten gem: a mini Trylon and Perisphere replica that once stood at the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel. This information booth structure was meant to be eye-catching and to “induce the out-of-town motorist to stop at the booths before plunging into Manhattan.” The Trylon and Perisphere were the centerpieces of the 1939 World’s Fair and this piece of promotional architecture was one of many replicas that popped up around NYC to promote the fair….

(16) NO WONDER THEY’RE ‘THE LAST’. The Guardian’s episode recap stirs up a panic: “’I didn’t sign up for a musical!’ Are the guitar sing-alongs killing The Last of Us?”

This week’s episode of The Last of Us contained a moment that froze the blood. For a split second, the hearts of the viewing audience rose into their throats in horror. This is a show that has presented us with terror after nightmarish terror but, even by these exceptional standards, this was almost too much to bear. I am talking, of course, about the scene where Ellie started playing a Pearl Jam song on a guitar.’

(17) TRAILER PARK. “Universal Drops ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Final Trailer” – Animation World Network sets the scene.

It’s a survival story, harkening back to the original, iconic Jurassic Park. Universal has just dropped the final trailer for its upcoming badass dino adventure, Jurassic World Rebirth, in theaters July 2.

With lots of big, sharp, pointy teeth!

The huge Jurassic franchise is back with its latest adventure, set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, filled with biting humor and biting creatures… including raptors! And Pterywhatevers! Johansson, Bailey and Mahershala Ali anchor an all-star cast as an extraction team, hunting potentially life-saving DNA at the original Jurassic Park’s research facilities, that happens to be inhabited by the worst of the worst dinosaurs that were left behind. The film also stars Rupert Friend and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Jean Martin, David Langford, John A Arkansawyer, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna) (and not Gene Wolfe, either).]

Pixel Scroll 5/21/25 “I Don’t Want To Teach This Particular World To Sing,” Said Tom Dyspeptically

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(1) STURGEON AWARD NEWS. The 2025 finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story have been selected. File 770 has the list here: “Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award 2025 Finalists”.

(2) LUCAS MUSEUM, DUE TO OPEN IN 2026, CUTS STAFF. “Lucas Museum lays off staff in Los Angeles one year before opening” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles — the $1 billion institution founded by “Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson — has laid off 14% of its full-time staff, a year ahead of its scheduled opening in 2026. 

Fifteen full-time employees — many from the education and public programming departments — were let go last week, along with seven part-time, on-call workers. 

The museum said the cuts were part of a “necessary shift of the institution’s focus” to ensure its timely debut in Exposition Park.

“It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum’s teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public,” the institution confirmed in a statement to the Chronicle. “ The museum will also continue hiring new roles in strategic operational areas in anticipation of the 2026 opening.”

Among those laid off was Bernardo Rondeau, curator of film programs, who was notified while attending the Cannes Film Festival. 

The move follows the February departure of director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont, whose role was divided between Lucas, now overseeing content, and Jim Gianopulos, the former chairman of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, serving as interim CEO….

Artist’s rendering of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

(3) GRRM WILL PRODUCE NEW WALDROP ADAPTATION. George R. R. Martin has signed on with Lion Forge Entertainment to adapt Howard Waldrop’s A Dozen Tough Jobs into an adult animated feature film, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively reveal.

The renowned author will produce the project, a reimagining of the Greek classic story of the 12 labors of Hercules. A Dozen Tough Jobs transports the mythic tale to 1920s Mississippi, where Hercules is re-envisioned as a former sharecropper fighting to regain his freedom…

… Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep, Hap & Leonard) is writing the screenplay. French animation studio Blue Spirit, the Emmy-winning studio behind Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, will provide animation services for the film under Lion Forge Animation….

(4) JIM BUTCHER Q&A. “14 Million Books Later, Jim Butcher Thinks His Wizard Detective Needs a Hug” says the New York Times. (Interview is behind a paywall.)

… Depression, which he had struggled with for much of his life, was deadening his days. His marriage was fraying. The charming raconteur, telling jokes to hundreds of fans on the science fiction and fantasy convention circuit, belied a man in crisis. So, he made a decision to end things.

As the deadline for his next book loomed, Butcher took two bottles of pills that he’d been using to treat chronic migraines and braced for the worst. He recalled feeling terribly sick for 36 hours. But he survived.

“I am really lucky to be here,” Butcher said quietly, as his 7-year-old pit bull, Brutus — named for an earth spirit in one of his books — dozed next to him on the couch.

Afterward, he thought about what his death might have done to his two sons, James (a novelist himself) and Dylan. He felt he needed to “own up to the consequences of my choice, and what could have happened if I hadn’t just been very fortunate.”

The result was the next installment in the series, “Ghost Story.” The book followed Harry Dresden’s ghost as he tried to solve his own murder, observing the ripple effects of his death “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style. It was the first in the series that Butcher didn’t plan out chapter by chapter ahead of time.

Butcher hasn’t opened up publicly about his mental health difficulties until recently, and he’s still reluctant to discuss them. He has been divorced twice, separations that have taken a toll (though he is newly engaged). Sowards said that there was a period where she wasn’t sure when she was going to get another book from him.

“We were able to be patient, and we supported him,” she said.

For lunch, Butcher sears me a steak on the stovetop, not unlike the typical meal that McAnally, the taciturn bartender from his books, would serve up. As Butcher carefully glazes the meat with a heart-healthy balsamic, I suggest that talking to a reporter is probably not great for his blood pressure.

“I mean, I debated whether or not to do this interview,” Butcher said, after adding garlic powder.

Stepping outside into the brisk, pine-scented air, he tells me that talking about his mental health was motivated, in part, by an interaction he had with a fan. At a book signing, he met a young man carrying a printout of writing advice Butcher had published on his LiveJournal. He autographed it and offered the fan encouragement about his own writing.

Butcher thought little of it at the time. But afterward, he said, the fan got in touch to tell Butcher that he had been prepared to kill himself, and that the writer’s words of support helped him decide to keep going. Since then, the two have struck up a friendship.

“I’ve talked to other young men who’ve had the same issues,” Butcher said. “I say, ‘You’re feeling overwhelmed. You need to make your world a bit smaller for a while. Set out some reasonable goals for yourself, get up in the morning, get the bed made, get the kitchen cleaned up, make sure your house looks nice.’”…

(5) IMAGINARY PAPERS. Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, their quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.

 In this issue, Anna Maria Grzybowska writes about Endling: Extinction is Forever, a 2022 video game exploring environmental crisis and nonhuman agency; Fitz Madrid explores psychedelic tendencies in speculative fiction, with particular attention to Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel Ubik; and Ari Brin reports on an anthology of rediscovered stories by nineteenth-century science fiction pioneer Robert Duncan Milne.

 (6) TODAY’S DAY.

(7) DISCWORLD REREAD. Christopher Lockett continues his series with “Discworld Reread #2: Equal Rites”.

…In Equal Rites (1987), we meet the character who is, to my mind, Sir Terry’s greatest achievement. I suppose everybody has their favourites, and there are definitely a good number of characters crowding the top tier. But for me, Esmerelda “Granny” Weatherwax is the apex.

Much like The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites is set in a Discworld that is still under construction—the shape of it identifiable in the unformed clay, which will eventually take more precise form with each sculpting session. One such refinement we already see at work is the way in which this novel’s satire is more substantive: not just taking the piss of fantasy’s tired and formulaic conventions, but pointing to the ways in which some of those conventions are reflective of broader social considerations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Equal Rites is very much a feminist novel. As the title’s pun might suggest … and as the opening paragraphs make clear, in case you weren’t paying attention:

“This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn’t pretend to answer all or any of these questions.

“It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author’s control. They might.

“However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive.” (11)

A novel about magic. And sex, though probably not in the rumpy-bumpy sense of the term—which means sex in the sense of gender, which further means that, should it come under the scrutiny of the current U.S. regime, it might find itself disappeared, because D.E.I….

(8) MAKING A COUNT. “WHAT THE HELL ARE PEOPLE DOING?” asks Max Comperatore, a software developer/prompt engineer based in Argentina. His site delivers “live-ish” estimates of what the human race is doing right now, from sleeping to warfare, restroom use, and intimacy. (It doesn’t deal with really small numbers, like how many are reading File 770…)

The Changelog includes – “Fixed ‘Intimacy’ count to always be an even number.”

(9) LIPSYNCH BY AI. “What if Making Cartoons Becomes 90% Cheaper?” asks the New York Times (behind a paywall).

“Fear not! For I shall lead ye to riches beyond your wildest dreams!”

Inside a tiny recording booth in downtown Los Angeles, John Peck waited for a verdict from the voice-over engineer: Did the line sound pirate-y enough?

Try again, the engineer suggested, perhaps with more throaty emphasis on “wildest.” It might make the animated character Mr. Peck was voicing — a buccaneer with a peg leg — a tiny bit funnier.

Mr. Peck, 33, cleared his throat and gave it a whirl, prompting chuckles from the production team. A couple of clicks on a laptop later, and an artificial intelligence tool synced Mr. Peck’s voice with a cartoon pirate’s mouth movements. The character was destined for an episode of “StEvEn & Parker,” a YouTube series about rapscallion brothers that attracts 30 million unique viewers weekly.

Just a few years ago, lip-syncing a minute of animation could take up to four hours. An animator would listen to an audio track and laboriously adjust character mouths frame by frame. But Mr. Peck’s one-minute scene took 15 minutes for the A.I. tool to sync, including time spent by an artist to refine a few spots by hand.

Toonstar, the start-up behind “StEvEn & Parker,” uses A.I. throughout the production process — from honing story lines to generating imagery to dubbing dialogue for overseas audiences. “By leaning into the technology, we can make full episodes 80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms,” said John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder.

“This is how you build the next generation of hot intellectual property,” Mr. Attanasio added excitedly…

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) TURING PAPERS TO AUCTION. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian reports“Alan Turing papers saved from shredder could fetch £150,000”. However, although the thesis is signed, the other papers are just off prints and if Filers would rather not pay £40-60,000, Turing’s foundational paper “On Computable Numbers” can be downloaded here (for free).

Widely considered the father of theoretical computer science, Alan Turing’s influence on modern life continues to be felt in the age of artificial intelligence. But despite this legacy, a cache of his most important papers was nearly shredded – only to be saved at the last minute when their significance was recognised at a family event.

At auction next month, the papers are expected to sell for as much as £150,000 in 13 separate lots.

Among the collection is the wartime codebreaker’s personal signed copy of his 1938 PhD dissertation, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, valued at between £40,000 to £60,000.

Also featured is his paper On Computable Numbers, also known as Turing’s proof, which introduced the world to the idea of a universal computing machine in 1936. It has been described as the first programming manual of the computer age and also has a guide price of £40,000 to £60,000….

(12) DONE WITH NO PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT. “Google Decided Against Offering Publishers Options in AI Search” reports Livemint.

While using web site data to build a Google Search topped with artificial intelligence-generated answers, an Alphabet Inc. executive acknowledged in an internal document that there was an alternative way to do things: They could ask web publishers for permission, or let them directly opt out of being included.

But giving publishers a choice would make training AI models in search too complicated, the company concludes in the document, which was unearthed in the company’s search antitrust trial. It said Google had a “hard red line” and would require all publishers who wanted their content to show up in the search page to also be used to feed AI features. Instead of giving options, Google decided to “silently update,” with “no public announcement” about how they were using publishers’ data, according to the document, written by Chetna Bindra, a product management executive at Google Search. “Do what we say, say what we do, but carefully.”

Site owners that rely on traffic can’t afford to skip listing on Google, which still holds more than 90% of the search market, making it a gateway to the modern web. Many have reluctantly let Google use their content to power search AI features, like AI Overviews, which provides AI-generated responses for some queries — despite the fact that the feature often eats into their traffic. By answering questions directly, AI Overviews obviates the need for users to click on links, depriving sites of opportunities to make money by showing ads and selling products….

(13) CRITIQUE OF THE AI INDUSTRY. [Item by Steven French.] Karen Hao, author of a new book in the development of AI is sceptical about a possible AI apocalypse but nevertheless argues that it could undermine democracy and has already distorted the research landscape: “’Every person that clashed with him has left’: the rise, fall and spectacular comeback of Sam Altman” in the Guardian.

The apocalyptic visions of a superintelligent AI turning against humanity have been a distraction, she thinks. “Ultimately, what’s going to cause catastrophe is people, not rogue AI, and we need to watch what the people are doing.” However, she has met people who genuinely believe AI will destroy humanity. “I spoke to people whose voices were literally quivering in fear, that is the degree to which they believe, and if you truly believe that, that’s terrifying.” Then there are those who use the idea of how AI could become so powerful as “a rhetorical tool to continue saying: ‘That’s why we good people need to continue controlling the technology and not have it be in the hands of bad people.’” But as far as Hao can see, “we’ve not gotten more democratic technologies, but more authoritarian ones.”

Neither does Hao have much sympathy for the argument that the development of AI requires huge investment. “I don’t think it needs the level of investment these companies say it needs,” she says. “They have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on developing a technology that has yet to achieve what they said it’s going to achieve,” says Hao. “And now you expect us to spend trillions? At what point do we decide that actually they’ve just failed?

“When I was covering AI pre-ChatGPT and the wide range of research that was happening, there were such exciting ideas … ChatGPT erased people’s imaginations for what else could be possible.” Generative AI has taken over – not just OpenAI, but at other tech companies including Google’s DeepMind – and this, says Hao, “has distorted the landscape of research, because talent goes where the money goes.”

(14) SUPERMAN II AND SUPERMAN TOO. Youtuber Russkafin analyzes two directors’ input to the Superman sequel. Watch it at the link: “CUT CUT: Superman II – Lester vs Donner”.

Did you know there are two very different versions of Superman II? You’ve probably heard of “The Donner Cut” and “The Lester Cut,” but maybe you didn’t know what that meant or what the difference was. In this video we go into great detail about how and why there are two different cuts, what the differences are, and weigh in on which version ultimately holds up better.

(15) TRAILER PARK. “Disney’s ‘Zootopia 2’ Lets the Fur Fly in New Teaser” – Animation Magazine sets the frame:

…Judy and Nick find themselves on the twisting trail of a great mystery when Gary De’Snake arrives in Zootopia and turns the animal metropolis upside down. To crack the case, they must go undercover to unexpected new parts of town, where their growing partnership is tested like never before….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Galen Charlton, Joey Eschrich, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 5/20/25 L.A. Mike And The Ark Of The Lost Scroll

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(1) SUN-TIMES PRINTS FAKE READING LIST. [Item by Steven H Silver.] On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published a recommended reading list.  The problem is that only 5 of the 15 books exist.  The other 10 were AI hallucinations.

The list includes the real Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and the not-quite-so-real The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir.

Ars Technica has the story: “Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books”.

The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media that he used AI to generate the content. “I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can’t believe I missed it because it’s so obvious. No excuses,” Buscaglia said. “On me 100 percent and I’m completely embarrassed.”

A check by Ars Technica shows that only five of the fifteen recommended books in the list actually exist, with the remainder being fabricated titles falsely attributed to well-known authors. AI assistants such as ChatGPT are well-known for creating plausible-sounding errors known as confabulations, especially when lacking detailed information on a particular topic. The problem affects everything from AI search results to lawyers citing fake cases.

On Tuesday morning, the Chicago Sun-Times addressed the controversy on Bluesky. “We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak,” the official publication account wrote. “It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom. We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon.”…

… Freelance journalist Joshua J. Friedman noted on Bluesky that the reading list was “part of a ~60-page summer supplement” published on May 18, suggesting it might be “transparent filler” possibly created by “the lone freelancer apparently saddled with producing it.”…

…The publication error comes two months after the Chicago Sun-Times lost 20 percent of its staff through a buyout program. In March, the newspaper’s nonprofit owner, Chicago Public Media, announced that 30 Sun-Times employees—including 23 from the newsroom—had accepted buyout offers amid financial struggles….

(2) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025. Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 short stories by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, has won the International Booker Prize 2025. It is a non-genre work.

In a collection of 12 short stories, Heart Lamp chronicles the everyday lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities in southern India.

Originally published in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, Banu Mushtaq’s portraits of family and community tensions testify to her years tirelessly championing women’s rights and protesting all forms of caste and religious oppression.

Mushtaq’s writing is at once witty, vivid, moving and excoriating, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. It’s in her characters – the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost – that she emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature.

(3) DARTH VADER IS STILL TALKING AND SAG-AFTRA TAKES ISSUE. [Item by Jim Janney.] “SAG-AFTRA Hits Fortnite With Unfair Labor Practice Over AI Darth Vader Voice” reports Variety — although the objection is not the use of James Earl Jones’ voice (which he authorized prior to his death), or even the use of AI, but the lack of negotiation to set a new price.

SAG-AFTRA is objecting to the use of AI to recreate the late James Earl Jones’ bass intonations of Darth Vader in Epic Games’ “Fortnite.”

The actors union said Epic-owned Llama Productions “chose to replace the work of human performers with AI technology” for the Star Wars-themed Fortnite Battle Royale mini-season that launched last week. “Unfortunately, they did so without providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms.” As such, SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Llama Productions….

…Jones, who died in 2024 at 93, had signed off an agreement to allow his archival voice recordings to be used to recreate his younger voice from the Star Wars films for future Lucasfilm projects. In addition, Jones’ family had granted permission for the use of his voice in “Fortnite,” according to Disney, Lucasfilm and Epic Games. “James Earl felt that the voice of Darth Vader was inseparable from the story of Star Wars, and he always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it,” his family said in a statement. “We hope that this collaboration with ‘Fortnite’ will allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.”

But SAG-AFTRA said “Fortnite’s” use of Jones’ AI-generated voice was not cleared by the union.

In its statement, the union said, “We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles. However, we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader’s iconic rhythm and tone in video games.”…

(4) IAIN M. BANKS MUST BE SPINNING. Vox notes “The tech billionaires are missing the point of their favorite sci-fi series”.

One of the most momentous developments of the new Trump era is how major billionaires in the tech industry — frequently known as the broligarchs — have thrown their weight behind the president. During the 2024 election, they offered high-profile support and made big donations; after the inauguration, they announced new company policies that aligned them with President Donald Trump’s regressive cultural ideologies.

Elon Musk had already turned Twitter into a right-wing echo chamber since purchasing it in 2022, and spent several chaotic months earlier this year as Trump’s government efficiency henchman. Jeff Bezos has revamped the Washington Post’s editorial section to build support for “personal liberties and free markets.” Mark Zuckerberg decided to get rid of fact-checkers at Meta.

It was a massive show of power that revealed how possible it is for these wealthy men to remake our culture in their own image, transforming how we speak to each other and what we know to be true. Using that power on Trump’s behalf seems to have paid mixed dividends for Silicon Valley, but it nonetheless makes clear how important it is to understand their worldview and their vision for the future.

Which is why it is striking to note that Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg share a favorite author: Iain M. Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer best known for his Culture series. Banks is an odd choice for a bunch of tech billionaires. The author, who died in 2013, was a socialist and avowed hater of the super-rich.

“The Culture series is certainly, in terms of more modern science fiction, one of my absolute favorites,” Bezos told GeekWire in 2018, adding, “there’s a utopian element to it that I find very attractive.” Bezos has attempted twice to adapt the series for TV at Amazon, once in 2018 and again in February. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg picked the Culture novel Player of Games for his book club in 2015….

… The politics of these books are not subtle, and they are also not compatible with the existence of billionaires. So it’s worth thinking about why the broligarchs have so consistently cited a socialist author as an inspiration. What do they find tantalizing about Banks’ work? Are they missing the point altogether?…

(5) ANOTHER BOOKSTORE SUPPORT FUNDRAISER. “Binc Launches Fundraising Campaign to Meet Increased Need and Rising Grant Amounts”. [Via Shelf Awareness.]  Dozens of authors and creators have joined the Book Industry Charitable Foundation to help launch the Now More Than Ever, I Stand with Bookstores fundraising campaign to encourage book and comic lovers to stand with their community stores in challenging times. 

Dozens of authors and creators from across genres have joined the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation to declare their commitment to book and comic people. Their support is launching the Now More Than Ever, I Stand with Bookstorescampaign to engage book and comic lovers in standing with their community stores amidst challenging times. Stores across the country will have displays May 19-June 2, 2025, encouraging in-store purchase and/or donating to Binc. 

Thanks to the generosity of Binc ambassador and best-selling author Amor Towles and other authors/creators the first $50,000 in donations received will be matched dollar for dollar. Donate today.

Binc noted that with the growing uncertainty regarding federal funding to support local community resources, the challenges against First Amendment rights, and overall financial insecurity, “store employees are at greater risk of harassment and not being able to withstand and navigate a personal crisis.” Requests to Binc for help have increased 8% over last year and the average amount to resolve a crisis is also rising….

(6) IS THE TIME LORD RUNNING OUT OF TIME? Inverse collates the Doctor Who cancellation rumors in “37 Years Later, The Oldest Sci-Fi Show Might Repeat Some Troubling History”.

…According to new rumors published by The Mirror, the current incarnation of Doctor Who, shepherded by showrunner Russell T Davies, is headed for a “big pause” after the 2025 “Season 2” concludes in two weeks. The report cites “insiders” who claim that Davies has “already planned the next two seasons, having almost completed scripts for series 16 and with stories for the 17th series worked out.” (Series 16 and 17 translate Season 3 and 4 in the new post-2024 number system.)

The rumor that’s bigger, and backed up by some confirmed statements, is that it’s unclear if the BBC’s partnership with Disney+ will continue after 2025. Before the latest season of Who launched, Inverse confirmed with Davies himself that “There’s no commission of Season 3 yet. There are no serious conversations about anything because the series doesn’t exist yet. But I love this job. I love staying in it. I’d be very happy.”…

(7) WELLMAN BOOK REMINDER. “Manly Wade Wellman’s Cahena Going Out of Print” and DMR Books would be happy to sell you a copy while they still can. Ordering information is here — “Cahena — DMR Books” – where there is also a detailed plot summary.

In 2020 DMR Books made arrangements to reprint Manly Wade Wellman’s final novel, Cahena, bringing it back into print for the first time in nearly thirty-five years. The contract is expiring soon, and at the end of May it will once again be unavailable.

Cahena is a historical novel (with fantasy elements) dealing with the brave and beautiful warrior queen who reigned over the Berbers in the seventh century. The Cahena, as she was known, was believed to be a sorceress and prophetess. She led an army forty thousand strong in a valiant struggle against the Mohammedan invaders who were fresh from their conquest of Carthage….

(8) AI / COPYRIGHT BATTLE IN PARLIAMENT. BBC reports “Peers demand more protection from AI for creatives”.

The House of Lords has dealt a second defeat to the government over its Data (Use and Access) Bill.

Peers had already backed an amendment calling for more copyright protections for the creative industries from artificial intelligence (AI) scrapers once.

MPs rejected that amendment and sent the Bill back to the Lords, where Technology Minister Baroness Jones told peers it would lead to “piecemeal” legislation as it pre-empted consultation on AI and copyright.

However, there was broad and vociferous support for Baroness Kidron, a film director and digital rights campaigner, who accused ministers of being swayed by the “whisperings of Silicon Valley” asking them to “redefine theft”.

The Lords rebellion follows condemnation from Sir Elton John, who called the government “losers” over the weekend and said ministers would be “committing theft” if they allowed AI firms to use artists’ content without paying.

He joins the ranks of high-profile musicians, including Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, and Kate Bush, who are outraged by plans they say would make it easier for AI models to be trained on copyrighted material.

Kidron’s amendment would force AI companies to disclose what material they were using to develop their programmes, and demand they get permission from copyright holders before they use any of their work.

Highlighting the power differential between the big tech giants in the US and creatives in the UK, Kidron branded the government’s plans “extraordinary”.

“There’s no industrial sector in the UK that government policy requires to give its property or labour to another sector – which is in direct competition with it – on a compulsory basis, in the name of balance,” she said….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 20, 1928 — Shirley Rousseau Murphy. (Died 2022.)

Now we come to a woman who wrote about cats who talked and understood human speech, Shirley Rousseau Murphy. How could I resist such a writer?  Certainly the Pixels wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t celebrate her, would they? 

The series that I’m interested is the Joe Grey series which involves a number of felines in a small coastal California town with a thriving tourist trade who develop the rather unusual ability not only to understand human speech but to talk it as well. No, it’s not explained, nor should it be. It is just is as all such things should be, 

Shirley Rousseau Murphy

In first novel, Cat on the Edge, Joe Grey, our central feline and mostly the narrator here and in all of the novels, is the only witness to a murder. As the author says on her website, “Escaping the killer, he becomes the hunted, and he’s one scared tomcat–until he meets green-eyed Dulcie, a charmer with talents to match his own.”  He also discovers shortly there’s the aforementioned talents. Weirded out at first, he’s delighted eventually. 

The writing here is better than just decent with some quite unexpected plot developments that add considerable depth to the story. Joe Grey as a cat seems a feline in his behavior, the setting is charming and makes sense, and the mysteries are reasonably good though I wouldn’t call them particularly deep. I should admit I find that true of nearly every mystery I read. If characters are interesting, the plot fascinating and the setting well crafted, I don’t care that the mystery is slight at best, which they more often than not are. 

It obviously sold well as there were twenty-one novels before she stopped with the last, Cat Chase the Moon, published after her death. A novella, Cat Chase the Moon, which I think is a prequel also has been published only by the usual suspects. 

So all of these novels in this series I suspect based on listening to the first eight and a number of the latter to date are all like any series of this sort such that you could read any or all of them and be entertained by what you read. Is there an explicit order to them? No idea though I do know the last one does wrap up the series. 

She has a number of other works, none of which I’ve read. 

The Fontana Duology is a paranormal series involving Satan Himself with cats again prominently involved based on the really cute orange tabbies on both covers, and also the titles are The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana and The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape. 

Tired of cats yet? You’re out of luck if you are as she wrote went on to pen The Catswold Portal where a young girl could transform herself into, oh guess. She actually notes on her website that she describes each cat in detail so this is a small calico.

Ok, I promise no more cats, so finally I’ll stop with dragons that I consider to be akin to cats. I really do. They probably like having their bellies tickled. Carefully. 

The Dragonbards trilogy which has as its story a sleeping dragon who awakens only to find her beloved land ruled by an evil despot and the only one who can save is a bard who is not be found. It’s a YA series that got very, very good reviews. 

Well I should say that she did unicorn fiction as well. Her story is “Starhorn” which is found in The Unicorn Treasure which she edited in the hardcover first edition from Doubleday cover art and illustrations by Tim Hildebrandt.

(I am not looking at her children’s fiction which would take many more paragraphs. Really it would. And there’s horses there.)

Cats, dragons, unicorns. Is that the Holy Trinity of fantasy fiction? If not, it should be. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SANCTUARY MOON. Inverse tells “Why Apple’s Best New Sci-Fi Series Created Its Own Version of ‘Star Trek’”. For those who can’t get enough Murderbot coverage, of which I am one.

…That’s right, while the primary story of SecUnit (Alexander Skarsgård) is the focus of Murderbot, the Murderbot itself is a big fan of a fictional sci-fi soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. While the book version of this meta-show was described by author Wells as “How to Get Away with Murder in Space,” the TV series version is very much more a Star Trek, complete with the hilarious catchphrase “boldness is all.” Speaking to Inverse, the showrunners of Murderbot, Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, revealed how their take on Sanctuary Moon happened.

Mild spoilers ahead.

In the series, we get John Cho of Star Trek fame as a kind of swaggering Captain Kirk figure, who may have the best collar and jacket in all of contemporary sci-fi. But both Weitzes note that casting Cho because of the Star Trek connection wasn’t the only reason to bring him into this project. “John did have that iconography coming in, as did Clark Gregg with his Marvel experience,” Paul Weitz explains. “But really these were just people who we had their phone numbers. We’d worked with John before on I think 12 films or something.”…

(12) HYDROGEN BOMB DESIGNER. [Item by Andrew Porter.] This is a very fascinating article, and there’s a link to an interview with his widow, which talks about growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Link bypasses the New York Times paywall: “Dick Garwin Fought Nuclear Armageddon. He Hid a 50-Year Secret”.

Enrico Fermi’s battle with cancer was nearing its end in late 1954 when he received a visitor.

Fermi, a Nobel laureate in physics, had fled fascism in Europe and become a founder of the nuclear age, helping bring the world’s first reactor and first atom bomb to life.

The visitor, Richard L. Garwin, had been Fermi’s student at the University of Chicago, the laureate calling him “the only true genius I have ever met.” Now, he had done something known at the time only by Fermi and a handful of other experts. Not even his family knew. Three years earlier, the boy wonder, then 23, had designed the world’s first hydrogen bomb, which brought the fury of the stars to Earth.

In a test, it had exploded with a force nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, its power greater than all the explosives used in World War II.

To his reverential student, Fermi confided a regret. He felt his life had involved too little participation in crucial issues of public policy. He died a few weeks later at 53.

After that visit, Dr. Garwin set out on a new path, seeing nuclear scientists as having a responsibility to speak out. His resolve, he later told a historian, came from a desire to honor the memory of the scientist he had known best and admired most…

(13) BLAST IN THE PAST. “14,000 years ago, the most powerful solar storm ever recorded hit Earth. ‘This event establishes a new worst-case scenario’” says Space.com.

An extreme solar storm hit Earth some 14,300 years ago, more powerful than any other such event known in human history, a new analysis of radiocarbon data has revealed.

The solar storm, the only known to have taken place in the last Ice Age, long eluded scientists as they lacked appropriate models for interpreting radiocarbon data from glacial climate conditions.

But a new study by a team from the Oulu University in Finland has taken a stab at the measurement interpretation with eye-opening results. Using a novel chemistry-climate model, the team found that the marked spike in the carbon-14 isotope detected in fossilized tree rings was caused by a solar storm more than 500 times as powerful as the 2003 Halloween Solar Storm, which was the most intense in modern history….

… In 2023, a major spike in radiocarbon concentrations in fossilized tree rings was discovered, indicating a major solar storm must have taken place as the last ice age was drawing to an end.

The new study was finally able to precisely assess the magnitude of that solar storm and date it more accurately. The scientists believe that solar storm took place between January and April in the year 12,350 BC, likely dazzling the hundreds of thousands of mammoth hunters who lived in Europe at that time with the most awe-inspiring aurora borealis….

…Scientists previously studied records of five other radiocarbon spikes found in tree ring data, which they attributed to powerful solar storms that had taken place in 994 AD, 775 AD, 663 BC, 5259 BC and 7176 BC….

(14) SPACE MAIL. [Item by Chris Barkley.] LOOK at what I found in my mailbox TODAY!!!!! I had completely forgotten that I did this when I attended Chicon 8!

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, Jim Janney, Dave Ritzlin, Steven H Silver, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 5/17/25 A Handbook For Pixels

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(1) AI HALLUCINATES ABOUT JG BALLARD. The Bookseller exposes that “Coca-Cola advert featuring JG Ballard novel ‘errors’ was ‘AI-leveraged’” (article is paywalled).

A Coca-Cola advert released as part of its “Classic” campaign, which features well-known authors referencing its products in their novels, appears to include an inaccurate representation of work by the English novelist JG Ballard.

The Empire of the Sun and Crash author is one of three writers included in an advertisement released by Coca-Cola in mid-April 2025. The advert shows an old-fashioned typewriter writing out excerpts from novels, such as Stephen King’s The Shining, as if the onlooker is watching the author type directly onto the page. References to Coca-Cola are accompanied by the appearance of the brand’s red logo and a burst of sound evoking that which might accompany the opening of a fizzy-drink bottle. As well extracts of work by King and VS Naipaul the advert presents us with Extreme Metaphors by JG Ballard, dated 1967. It features a misspelling of the Chinese city of Shanghai.

JG Ballard, who was published by HarperCollins in the UK, did not write a novel published in 1967 called Extreme Metaphors. There is, however, a book titled Extreme Metaphors: Selected Interviews with JG Ballard, edited by Dan O’Hara and Simon Sellars (4th Estate) and published in 2012, three years after Ballard’s death. O’Hara told 404Media: “The sequence of words being typed out by the imagined JG Ballard in the ad was never written by him, only spoken, and the only person ever to type that exact sequence out in English is me.”…

(2) HORROR UNIVERSITY OPEN FOR ENROLLMENT. StokerCon has announced the 2025 Horror University workshop schedule. From June 12-15 they will present nine live, in-person workshops at StokerCon 2025 in Stamford, CT. See course descriptions at the link.

HORROR UNIVERSITY is designed for horror writers interested in refining their writing, learning new skills and techniques, exploring new writing formats, or better understanding the genre. These workshops are taught by some of the most experienced voices in horror. 

​Registration per workshop is $55 per workshop for all attendees. General registration for StokerCon does not include Horror University programming; additional registration is required so that the Con is able to compensate each instructor for their workshop and support the cost of the program.​

More details are available on Eventbrite and will be posted to StokerCon.com soon! Horror Universty workshops are separately ticketed sessions. Registrations may be purchased through the Registration portal.

(3) TUNED IN. A new episode – “Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest” reviewed by Camestros Felapton. This is an ambiguous excerpt, but I want to avoid spoiling the review, the same way Camestros avoids spoiling the episode.

…Undoubtedly this is going to be a divisive episode. Some Doctor Who places I visit are showing a lot of love for it but I think a more general consensus is one of disappointment.

My main takeaway is that this episode is the best example of the recurring problem with this season….

(4) NIVEN Q&A. “Larry Niven interview: Ringworld legend discusses his classic novel and all things sci-fi” – a fun dialog that Niven fans will enjoy.

EHW: Is there anything you would do differently if you wrote Ringworld today?

LN: I’ve been telling people that I would start over with a universe in which you can’t go faster than light [and] nobody’s got psychic powers. The point is, if you build a Ringworld, it has to be because you can’t reach other stars…

EHW: What is the one piece of advice you would offer someone trying to write science fiction today?

LN: Shorten your name, like I did….

(5) BRADBURY’S BEST. James Wallace Harris only wants to read the best Bradbury – so how can he make sure he doesn’t miss any? Harris tries to solve that problem in “How Many Ray Bradbury Short Stories Do You Want to Read?” at Classics of Science Fiction.

…However, over the last five years, I’ve been gorging on science fiction short stories, and I’ve been surprised by how often his stories show up in anthologies. Then, a few weeks ago, I read The Bradbury Chronicles, a biography of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller. Bradbury’s life was riveting, inspiring me to read more of his work. According to the Library of Congress, Bradbury published over 600 short stories. According to the Weller biography, by the late 1940s, Bradbury was writing and publishing a short story a week.

Piet Nel sent me a spreadsheet with 375 stories from all of Bradbury’s major collection. Piet also said, “Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, by Eller & Touponce (2004), has a comprehensive story list, compiled with academic rigor, up to 2002. It runs to about 400 stories.” So, it’s hard to reconcile the 600 number from the Library of Congress. Piet also sent me the link to Phil Nichols’ site and his Short Story Finder….

…I just don’t want to read that many Ray Bradbury stories. I just want to read his best stories, but I’m unsure which ones are the best. I’m partial to his science fiction stories, but I’m willing to read any type as long as they are among his best….

(6) GOLD STANDARD. “US Mint releases Space Shuttle $1 gold coin” and Popular Science tells how to get one.

You can now own a $1 gold coin celebrating one of America’s most revolutionary achievements: the NASA Space Shuttle program. The latest variant in the ongoing American Innovation $1 Coin series is available to order through the United States Mint. Selected to represent the state of Florida, the noncirculating legal tender is the third coin released this year and the 28th coin in the 15-year project first announced in 2018.

While the coin’s front displays the series’ Statue of Liberty image, the back shows the shuttle launching above plumes of exhaust. United States Mint Medallic Artist Eric David Custer sculpted the image while Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) Designer Ron Sanders designed it….

(7) MURDERBOT PRAISE. A highly favorable review – with a headline that makes an interesting claim: “’Murderbot’ review: This sci-fi show is the best new comedy of 2025” at NPR.

…I laughed a lot, watching Murderbot, and admired how much the show gets right from the jump. SecUnit offers a running commentary on the action, so the show is awash in voiceover. But that voiceover is used, never relied upon. It’s always employed in ways that individualize and particularize SecUnit’s character, which often manifests in jokes that undercut the events we’re watching through its eyes.

About those space-hippies. There are a lot of jokes at their expense, but they’re not the kind of lazy, lay-up, make-fun-of-the-wokes jokes. They’re specific, and so firmly rooted in character that they allow each member of the team to distinguish themselves from each other, to be weird in their own particular way….

…So, yeah. Murderbot is the best comedy series I’ve seen this year and I’m gonna be shouting that from the rooftops. Check out the episodes that drop Friday on Apple TV+. If you like them, do me a favor, because we need to get the word out about this show:

Meet me on the roof.

(8) LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. Seems the demand wasn’t that great in 1946. “Harvard Law Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original.” The New York Times tells about the discovery. (Article is behind a paywall.)

Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946.

That is about to change.

Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties.

It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.

“I never in all my life expected to discover a Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London, describing the moment in December 2023 when he made the startling find.

The manuscript’s value is hard to estimate, although it is fair to say that its price tag of under $30 (about $500 today) must make it one of the bargains of the last century. A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.

Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, in eastern England, helped authenticate the text. He noted that the document, which bound the nation’s rulers to acting within the law, had resurfaced at a time when Harvard has come under extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration….

(9) JIM WALKER OBITUARY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sadly, the British SF fan Jim Walker has passed. Jim was a friend of, and a contributor to, the SF² Concatenation. His first offerings were a couple of book reviews back in the mid-1990s. From the early 2000s to 2017, he was one of our regular convention reporters, especially of Eurocons. He also took part in the Anglo-Romanian Fan Fund activities of the 1990s to early 2000s attending events, both here in Britain when there were visiting Eastern European fans, and also in Timisoara, Romania, with our two International Weeks of Science and SF in 1999 and 2003.

In addition to Eurocons, he was a regular at Britain’s (there are others) Festival of Fantastic Films and the British Eastercon. A civil engineer by training and profession, in retirement he made short films with local friends including a couple of SF offerings which, naturally, were screened at the Festival of Fantastic Films. Sadly, Jim was not at the 2023 Festival of Fantastic Films which I attended for the first time in a few years. We last physically met up in the summer of 2019 when he came down to London. We met to take in the view by Greenwich Observatory of the Thames and the new financial district to the north. We then walked across Blackheath’s Black Death plague pit (hence Blackheath’s name), to have lunch at a real ale hostelry… The thing about ‘last times’ is that when they occur you never know then that they are a ‘last time’. Farewell old pal.

The Dead Dog party participants following a gala dinner for the 1st International Week of Science & SF in 1999. Jim is far left (Jonathan next to him, yellow tie).

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

By Paul Weimer: The Empire Strikes Back. The Greatest of the Star Wars films?

Possibly. 

Like Star Wars, I didn’t get to see this one in the theater. I didn’t get any playsets for this one, no Cloud City playset, unfortunately. I had a sketchy idea of the events of the movie from seeing Return of the Jedi, and the Atari 2600 videogame. Oh, and the vector laser arcade game. So I knew only a sketch of the movie and its events.

It would be when it aired on TV in the mid-80’s (along with Star Wars itself, and after I had seen ROTJ) that I would finally see the movie. 

Best script of the entire nine movies? Possibly. For freshness and reinvention, the original Star Wars has Empire beat, but Star Wars can be slow going in places, where Empire is much leaner, meaner and more controlled in its blaster fire. We see how Lucas clearly had changed his mind about Luke and Leia and started the run toward Leia and Han. We meet Yoda, in his best incarnation. Force Ghost Obi-Wan.  And just the casual way Vader deflects the laser fire from Han Solo was just so good. It answered the question of “Why don’t you just shoot him?” that I had wondered since his lightsaber fight in Star Wars. 

And of course “Luke, I am your Father”. One of the greatest twists in modern cinema, without none. Was Vader lying? Why did Obi-Wan lie if he wasn’t? It brings Luke and the Rebellion to a low point not long after, Han captured, the rebellion scattered to the wind. In the Hero’s Journey, this is about as low as things can get in the trilogy. The middle of trilogies is hard, often flabby or repetitive. Empire is none of these. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) BUSTED. “How Broken is Google?” Camestros Felapton would like to tell you.

I’ve been writing short spoiler-free reviews of the current seasons of Doctor Who each (for me) Sunday morning, having watched the show Saturday (evening). Last week, I had a bit of blank on the title of the episode: was it the Story Engine…no…not quite. Rather than tie myself in knots I just googled it. “doctor who recent episode”.

Google came back with an answer: Castrovalva: Part One, Doctor Who Season 117, episode 1. It had a little picture of Peter Davison next to it. Observant readers will spot that Peter Davison is not Ncuti Gatwa, Castrovalva was broadcast 43 years ago and that, while long running, Doctor Who has not had 117 seasons….

And that’s not all!

(13) WHERE IT BEGAN. BBC reports about “The ‘space archaeologists’ hoping to save our cosmic history”.  (And yet not a mention of River Song!)

Space is being commercialised on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species’ journey into space are in danger of being lost – both in orbit and down here on Earth. 

Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programmes.

They also have another use. Studying these artefacts and sites helps researchers better understand how astronauts interact with new technology, adapt to new environments and develop new cultural practices. The conclusions of researchers can influence the design of future spacecraft and help future space missions succeed.

Can a new generation of pioneering space archaeologists like Alice Gorman and Justin Walsh help save our space heritage for coming generations, and how might their work change space exploration in the future? …

(14) IT HAS A PULSE. [Item by Steven French.] Not saying it’s aliens but not *not* saying it’s aliens either! “Not saying it’s aliens: SETI survey reveals unexplained pulses from distant stars” at Phys.org.

More than 60 years ago, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) officially began with Project Ozma at the Greenbank Observatory in West Bank, Virginia. Led by famed astronomer Frank Drake (who coined the Drake Equation), this survey used the observatory’s 25-meter (82-foot) dish to monitor Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti—two nearby sun-like stars—between April and July of 1960. Since then, multiple surveys have been conducted at different wavelengths to search for indications of technological activity (aka “technosignatures”) around other stars.

While no conclusive evidence has been found that indicates the presence of an advanced civilization, there have been many cases where scientists could not rule out the possibility. In a recent paper, veteran NASA scientist Richard H. Stanton describes the results of his multi-year survey of more than 1,300 sun-like stars for optical SETI signals. As he indicates, this survey revealed two fast identical pulses from a sun-like star about 100 light-years from Earth that match similar pulses from a different star observed four years ago…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. DUST has posted “Sci-Fi Short Film ‘Imminent Arrival’”.

Richard James, AKA “Reaper Rick,” is a simple Red-blooded, paranoid, country man. His long history of Military Service has taught him to never trust the government, pushing him to live out his days in the country, off of the grid. Other than his religious viewership of his favorite cable news network, his only other connection to the outside world is through his good buddy, “Squinty Joe,” who he only keeps in contact through HAM Radio. The two of them engage daily about the latest wild conspiracy theories, further exacerbating and shaping their views on the world. The two are constantly trying to one-up each other, bragging about who has the latest gear or best doomsday prep. In their minds, the apocalypse is right around the corner so it only makes sense to have a solid plan. In this Sci-fi Dramedy short film, we follow a day in the life of Rick as his intense paranoia becomes a reality during one of the strangest days of his life!

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mark Roth-Whitworth for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 5/16/25 It’s Hot As Hell In Pixeldelphia

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(1) NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY PICKS ROBERT A. HEINLEIN MEMORIAL AWARD WINNER. “Legendary Nasa Astronaut Story Musgrave To Receive Award At The International Space Development Conference” reports Fox 5 San Diego.

Former NASA astronaut Dr. Story Musgrave will receive the prestigious Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award for his efforts toward making humanity a spacefaring civilization this June at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference® (ISDC®). The conference will be held June 19-22 in Orlando, Florida, at the Rosen Centre Hotel.

Musgrave is a former NASA astronaut who was active during the Apollo, Skylab, and shuttle programs. He flew into space six times and aboard all five shuttle orbiters. He is also a medical doctor and holds six academic degrees in mathematics and statistics, business administration, chemistry, physiology and biophysics, literature, and an M.D. Musgrave served in the U.S. Marine Corps and has flown 17,700 hours in a wide variety of aircraft including 7,500 hours in jets.

“Story Musgrave is a legend in the astronaut corps,” said Isaac Arthur, president of the NSS. “Besides his stunning academic accomplishments, he is also a pilot, has practiced medicine, and is deeply educated in literature. He is a true polymath, and his contributions to core ideas of long-term spaceflight and settlement are impressive, making him a truly deserving of the prestigious Heinlein Memorial Award.”…

(2) GREGORY BENFORD UPDATE. Kathryn Cramer wrote in a comment on File 770 today:

I called Greg Benford last night and spoke to him about the statement Jim is circulating. Greg opposes Jim getting control of his finances and of his life.

My understanding is that this was either Jim’s 5th or 6th attempt to get Greg under conservatorship. The statement posted by Joe Haldeman was emailed out by Jim Benford as a PDF to a number of Gregs hard SF writer friends. (I now have a copy of the PDF.) Apparently, Jim was requesting that they post it.

The statement does not accurately represent the situation. And indeed if everything in the statement were true, Jim would not be causing the situation to be litigated on Facebook and via spamming Greg’s friends.

Cramer has made similar posts on Facebook, including here and here, where many comments have been left.

(3) ERIN UNDERWOOD PRESENTS. Erin Underwood has two new videos, a review of the first two episodes of Murderbot on Apple TV+, and a review of the conclusion of Andor Season 2. 

  • Murderbot TV Series Review – Did They Get It Right?

Apple TV+ brings The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells to life—but does the series capture the sarcastic, media-loving SecUnit fans adore? Here’s my review of Episodes 1 & 2 and why Murderbot might be your next favorite sci-fi series.

  • Andor’s Ending Just Rewrote Rogue One – Star Wars Finale Review

Andor Season 2 ends not with a bang, but with something more powerful. In this review of Episodes 10–12, I explore how Tony Gilroy’s season finalé doesn’t just complete Cassian Andor’s arc, it reshapes how we understand Rogue One. From Luthen’s quiet sacrifice to Kleya’s infiltration (and the surprising final scene that reframes Cassian’s final moments) this series changes everything.

(4) WHAT IS NEWS? The Pew Research Center analyzes “What News Is (and Isn’t) According to Americans”.

…In the digital age, researchers – including Pew Research Center – increasingly study news from the audience perspective, what some have deemed an “audience turn.” Using this approach, the concept of news is not necessarily tied to professional journalism, and audiences, rather than journalists, determine what is news….

…Key findings:

  • Defining news has become a personal, and personalized, experience. People decide what news means to them and which sources they turn to based on a variety of factors, including their own identities and interests.
  • Most people agree that information must be factual, up to date and important to society to be considered news. Personal importance or relevance also came up often, both in participants’ own words and in their actual behaviors.
  • “Hard news” stories about politics and war continue to be what people most clearly think of as news. U.S. adults are most likely to say election updates (66%) and information about the war in Gaza (62%) are “definitely news.”
  • There are also consistent views on what news is not. People make clear distinctions between news versus entertainment and news versus opinion.
  • At the same time, views of news as not being “biased” or “opinionated” can conflict with people’s actual behaviors and preferences. For instance, 55% of Americans believe it’s at least somewhat important that their news sources share their political views.
  • People don’t always like news, but they say they need it: While many express negative emotions surrounding news (such as anger or sadness), they also say it helps them feel informed or feel that they “need” to keep up with it.
  • People’s emotions about news are at times tied to broader feelings of media distrust, or specific events going on at that time – perhaps in combination with individuals’ political identities. For instance, partisans often react positively to news about their own political parties or candidates and negatively to news covering their opposition, which means feelings can shift with political changes.

(5) ANOTHER SEASON OF FUTURE FOOTBALL. [Item by N.] Sports writer and documentarian Jon Bois’ multimedia narrative 17776 amassed a lot of buzz and a cult fandom upon its release in 2017 (this contributor remembers trying to push for it to get a Hugo nomination, despite its unconventional framing). Following its 2020 sequel 20020, it looks like there’s a third installment coming—and this time, it’s been sold to Tor:

(6) THE SENTENCE IS WRITTEN. “Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie gets 25 years in prison” reports NPR.

Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder.

Matar, 27, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder in February for his attack on the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye.

The assault left Rushdie, now 77, partially blind and with permanent nerve damage. The author did not return to the Chautauqua County court in Mayville, N.Y., for the sentencing, but did submit a victim impact statement….

(7) LORDS CONSIDER AMENDED AI BILL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The House of Lords (in the UK) have returned a second time to the House of Commons an amendment to the forthcoming Data (Use and Access) Bill.  This amendment has already been rejected twice by the Commons who want AI trainers copyright free access to copyright material.  The House of Lords want IP creators to have the right to refuse to allow their work be used to train AIs. The Lords voted against
the Commons position by 287 to 88.

We await the Commons response. Constitutionally – and remember Britain has an unwritten constitution (unlike WSFS) – the Commons should now accept their Lordship’s view, however there is precedent for them to ignore it though that would likely spark a bit of a Parliamentary row.  We await, with interest, outcomes.

Details here: “Industry urges government to accept data bill AI amendment as it passes in Lords” at The Bookseller (behind a paywall).

(8) A TIME THE WRITER GOT PAID. Daytonian in Manhattan recalls some notable tenants of “H. I. Feldman’s 1940 139 East 35th Street” in New York.

…Moving into an apartment in October 1941 were actor Frank O’Connor and his wife, author and screenwriter Ayn Rand.  The couple met on the set of Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings and were married on April 15, 1929.  Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, Ayn became an American citizen in 1931.

Two months after moving in, Rand landed a contract to publish the novel she was working on, The Fountainhead.  It was published in May 1943.  Later that year, Rand returned home from a business lunch and, according to Anne Conover Heller in her Ayn Rand and the World She Made:

When she got back to the apartment, tired and downcast, her husband was waiting in the dimly lit living room, a peculiar look on his face.  “Well, darling,” he said, after a dramatic pause, “while you were at lunch you earned fifty thousand dollars.”

Frank O’Connor had received the phone call from Warner Bros. informing her they had purchased the screen rights to The Fountainhead.  The couple left 139 East 35th Street in December that year….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 16, 1999 — The Phantom Menace

By Paul Weimer: The year was 1999 and the Moon blasted out of orbit, leaving Martin Landau and Barbara Bain to wander through space…

Wait, wrong universe, let’s try again.

The year was 1999. Near the end of the decade between the fall of the wall and the fall of the Towers. Sixteen years after Return of the Jedi. The Phantom Menace was going to be released in theaters. Uncharacteristically for me, I had already seen the soundtrack and realized that there was a movie spoiler hidden in the list of tracks.

Regardless, I was determined to see it in a theater, on opening day. I tried three theaters that day (May 16th) before finally getting a ticket, in a completely full theater. It was an event, an excitement in the air.  And then the crawl began. The cadence and style were of the first three movies, but taxation dispute? What WAS this? And then the movie began.

There is some good stuff, some of the old Lucas magic. The Qui-Gon and Obi relationship. Classic serial plot twist with the switched Princess. The enemy droids. (Roger, Roger). Some of Naboo looks great.

But some of the magic was gone or worse, turned and twisted. Jar-Jar Binks, the worst character Lucas has created, bar none. Anakin originally made C3P0? Really? Why? It’s a story beat and choice that makes absolutely no sense, then or now. 

And then there is the momentum killer. Don’t get me wrong, the pod race is a spectacle and very fun to watch. But it absolutely kills the momentum of a movie that is flailing already. Sure, Ben-Hur did it but Ben-Hur was not floundering before the chariot race. The pod race is outsized for the stakes it has. And the movie never recovers from it.  By the time we get to the fight with Darth Maul, it’s a relief, not the culmination of a great movie. Lucas’ magic failed him in this movie. 

I tried watching the movie one more time since that fateful opening day…and my opinion, unfortunately, has not improved. I did watch Attack of the Clones and The Revenge of the Sith and those movies have their own problems. But, fortunately, they are not The Phantom Menace.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SPIDER-GWEN. Announced earlier today at Collider, the adventures of Spider-Gwen will undergo an evolution this August in Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Paolo Villanelli.

The series follows Phillips and Villanelli’s current run of Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider which comes to a thrilling conclusion this July and sets the stage for this bold new beginning. Departing her home dimension under mysterious circumstances and finding herself trapped in Earth-616, Gwen embarked on a journey involving Loki, the TVA, and the reality-altering Cosmic Cube. Now, Gwen’s extended stay becomes permanent as her very life is rewoven into the main Marvel Universe!

Gwen Stacy isn’t from this Earth but she’s here to stay, so it’s time to make herself at home! A new costume, a new home life– heck, she’s even starting a new band! Unfortunately for Gwen, new threats are also heading her way, starting with one that just might be her own fault! Follow the Ghost-Spider as she settles into Earth-616 to stay!

“For Gwen, this new start is about possibility,” Phillips told Collider. “She’s carrying the weight of her past, but she’s finally in a place where she can build something new—new allies, new purpose, and maybe even a new sense of self… or, recovering an element of herself we haven’t seen in a while. Like playing in a band.”

(12) FIRST VOLDEMORT, NOW… “Hunger Games Sunrise on the Reaping: Ralph Fiennes Is President Snow” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Lionsgate‘s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping has found its President Snow.

Ralph Fiennes will play the ruthless Panem dictator in director Francis Lawrence‘s forthcoming film in the franchise, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively…

…Fiennes follows in the footsteps of the late Donald Sutherland, who portrayed Coriolanus Snow in the series’ first four films that kicked off with The Hunger Games hitting theaters in 2012. Blyth starred as a younger version of the character opposite Rachel Zegler in 2023’s prequel feature The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes….

(13) IS HE SUPE ENOUGH? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s “Week in Geek” considers the trailer for James Gunn’s Superman: “James Gunn’s new Superman is more human than alien god – but can he still inspire awe?”

For those of us brought up on the 1978 version of Superman, the sight of him squirming in the face of a mildly probing interview by Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) in the first full trailer for James Gunn’s Superman is like watching a Greek god forget his lines in a school play. Rather than a morally upright, granite-jawed colossus watching over us like Jesus in a cape, this new David Corenswet-essayed take on Kal-El is one who is less a saviour from the stars than a disbelieving schoolboy who can’t quite understand how he’s getting aggravation for rescuing a cat up a tree….

(14) SOL GALL. “Sun Launches Its Strongest Solar Flare of the Year So Far, Causing Radio Blackouts Around the World” reports Smithsonian Magazine.

The sun has had quite a busy week hurling solar flares at our planet, causing blackouts across the globe.

“After weeks of calm, solar activity is suddenly high again,” reports Spaceweather.com. This is not totally unexpected, as scientists announced in the fall that the sun has reached the peak of its natural, 11-year cycle of activity, a high level known as the solar maximum. During this phase, the sun has more sunspots—dark, cool regions with tangled-up magnetic fields that can erupt material out into space.

The recent flares came from a pair of sunspots, including a new one that emerged earlier this week. Called AR4087, the spot is not completely aligned with Earth, but it’s currently turning toward our planet. “If the explosions continue for a few more days, however, Earth will find itself squarely in the strike zone,” with the potential for aurora-causing coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to arrive, writes Spaceweather.com….

… On Tuesday, a sunspot named AR4086 shot out an X1.2 solar flare. The very next day, the new sunspot AR4087 followed up with an M5.3 flare before a significantly stronger X2.7 flare—then topped it all off with another M7.7 flare, as reported by Live Science’s Jess Thomson. The AR4087 explosion caused “strong” R3 radio blackouts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, per Space.com’s Daisy Dobrijevic….

(15) JUST PUCKER UP, AND BLOW. [Item by Steven French.] If we could talk with the animals … well, maybe someday we can: “Dolphin whistle decoders win $100,000 interspecies communication prize” reports the Guardian.

A $100,000 prize for communicating with animals has been scooped by researchers who have shed light on the meaning of dolphins’ whistles.

The Coller-Dolittle Prize for Two-way Inter-species Communication was launched last year by the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University.

The winning team, the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program led by Laela Sayigh and Peter Tyack from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has been studying bottle-nosed dolphins in waters near Sarasota, Florida, for more than four decades.

The researchers used non-invasive technologies such as hydrophones and digital acoustic tags attached by suction cups to record the animals’ sounds. These include name-like “signature” whistles, as well as “non-signature” whistles – sounds that make up about 50% of the animals’ calls but are poorly understood.

In their latest work, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, the team identified at least 20 different types of non-signature whistle that are produced by multiple dolphins, finding two types were each shared by at least 25 individuals.

When the researchers played these two sounds back to dolphins they found one triggered avoidance in the animals, suggesting it could be an alarm signal, while the other triggered a range of responses, suggesting it could be a sound made by dolphins when they encounter something unexpected…

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, N., Erin Underwood, Steven H Silver, Danny Sichel, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Maytree.]

Pixel Scroll 5/13/25 The Psy Who Clicked In From The Scroll

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(1) ATWOOD’S FREEDOM TO PUBLISH AWARD. The Guardian reports an award acceptance speech in which “Margaret Atwood says she cannot remember another time ‘when words themselves have felt under such threat’”.

Margaret Atwood has said she cannot remember another point in her lifetime “when words themselves have felt under such threat”.

“Words are our earliest human technology, like water they appear insubstantial, but like water they can generate tremendous power” the 85-year-old novelist said in her acceptance speech for the freedom to publish prize at the British Book awards.

“Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade,” she added. “The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.”

The British Book awards, colloquially known as the Nibbies, are a set of prizes for authors, illustrators and book industry professionals run by the publishing trade magazine, The Bookseller. …

…Though Atwood did not attend the ceremony in London, she recorded a video acceptance speech to be shown when she was announced winner of the freedom to publish award, which is supported by freedom of expression campaign organisation Index on Censorship and was established in 2022 to “highlight the growing threats to writers, publishers and booksellers, and to amplify those who fight back”.

(2) FIGHTING BACK. “Jamie Lee Curtis just wanted an AI ad removed, not to become the ‘poster child of internet fakery’” – at the LA Times (behind a paywall).

Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t expect to be at the forefront of the artificial intelligence debate in Hollywood. But she didn’t have a choice.

The Oscar-winning actor recently called out Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on social media, saying the company ignored her requests to take down a fake AI-generated advertisement on Instagram that had been on the platform for months.

The ad, which used footage from an interview Curtis gave to MSNBC about January’s Los Angeles area wildfires, manipulated her voice to make it appear that she was endorsing a dental product, Curtis said.

“I was not looking to become the poster child of internet fakery, and I’m certainly not the first,” Curtis told The Times by phone Tuesday morning.

The ad has since been removed.

What happened to Curtis is part of a larger issue actors are dealing with amid the rise of generative AI technology, which has allowed their images and voices to be altered in ways they haven’t authorized. Those changes can be wildly misleading….

(3) DOOR DRAGONS AT WORK. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] They told him, both of them, to Go Away. From NPR: “The President has named a new Acting Librarian of Congress. It’s his former defense lawyer.”

Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, has been appointed as the acting Librarian of Congress by President Trump, according to a spokesperson at the Department of Justice….

Blanche has no experience working in libraries or archives,…

An employee at the Librarian of Congress, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said two men showed up this morning with a letter saying that Blanche was appointed the acting Librarian of Congress, Brian Nieves was appointed acting assistant librarian, and Paul Perkins was appointed the acting Register of Copyrights and Director of the Copyright Office. The men were not allowed into offices and left soon after, the employee said, adding that the Library of Congress is a legislative branch agency, and has not yet received direction from Congress on how to move forward….

Publishers Weekly offers more detail about the turnover: “U.S. Executive and Legislative Branches Battle at the LoC”.

Does the future of the free world come down to who oversees the Library of Congress? Events of the past five days suggest as much, with a pitched battle over who may serve as interim Librarian and strong words from the House of Representatives.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was summarily fired, via email, late in the day on May 8. At the time of her removal, Hayden was serving a 10-year appointment that would have concluded in 2026, and her sudden ouster—without clear grounds for dismissal—was met with nationwide rage and disappointment from librarians, members of Congress, and the general public. Robert R. Newlen was named acting Librarian to replace Hayden, according to LoC seniority regulations and rules for succession.

Newlen has substantial experience in the agency, having worked at the Library of Congress from 1975–2017, and having been appointed (by Hayden) interim director of the Congressional Research Service in 2023. Newlen is a past member of the American Library Association executive board, a senior trustee of the ALA endowment, and 2016 recipient of the ALA Medal of Excellence.

One of Newlen’s first official acts as Librarian was to inform staff that the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, had been fired Saturday, May 10. Perlmutter, also appointed by Hayden, had served in the role since 2020. The Copyright Office is housed in the Library of Congress and likewise belongs to the U.S. legislative branch, and the director is appointed to the post by the Librarian. As of May 12, no new acting director had been identified.

Newlen served for all of one weekend before the Trump administration attempted to remove him too. The New York Times reported that deputy attorney general Todd Blanche—already in a prominent Department of Justice role—had been named acting Librarian on May 12, and immediately thereafter was embroiled in a standoff with Newlen. Politico broke the news that Newlen “disputed a change that had been made in an email to library staff Monday morning” and did not cede the role to Blanche, calling for Congress and not the executive branch to direct the process….

(4) EARLY RETURNS ON MURDERBOT. “’Murderbot’ Review: Apple’s New Comedy Sci-Fi Is A Great Vehicle For Alexander Skarsgard, But Not Without Its Problems” at Forbes. Beware mild spoilers.

…The most endearing thing about Murderbot is it’s / his (nobody quite knows how to refer to SecUnit when it comes to pronouns, a running gag) obsession with The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which is basically the show you’d get if Star Trek and Days Of Our Lives had a lovechild. The show has 2,797 episodes and we get little glimpses of them in action because Murderbot spends every waking moment glued to his entertainment feed, and is annoyed when pesky humans and their problems get in the way…

(5) PAGERTURNERS. “People who prefer physical books over ebooks usually display these 7 behaviors, says psychology” – Global English Editing has the story. First on the list:

1) They value the sensory experience

You see, for physical book lovers, reading is more than just deciphering words. It’s a sensory affair.

The smell of the paper, especially in a new book fresh off the shelf or an old one rich with history, is intoxicating to them.

The tactile stimulation of flipping through pages, feeling the texture under their fingertips, provides a satisfaction that swiping on a screen simply can’t match.

And there’s something about hearing the gentle rustle of pages turning or seeing your progress as you slowly traverse from the right side of the book to the left that makes reading a physical book uniquely rewarding.

It’s this immersive, multi-sensory experience that often keeps them loyal to traditional books, despite the convenience of digital alternatives. So if you’re someone who relishes these sensory delights, it’s safe to say you might be a physical book lover at heart….

(6) LACON V RATES TO INCREASE. Memberships in the 2026 Worldcon will cost more on June 15.

LAcon V membership rates go up on June 15th!

Right now, full attending adult memberships are $200 and will increase to $230. (All other memberships will remain the same price for now.) Our installment plan is also currently available for full adult attending memberships!

Visit the registration page on the website to get your membership before prices go up: https://www.lacon.org/register

Take advantage of the installment plan right now: https://www.lacon.org/2025/05/10/installmentplan

(7) CANARY IN THE COALMINE: USING “VIRTUAL VOICE”. [Item by Francis Hamit.] This link is for my new audiobook It is a test. https://a.co/d/07HmIQf

I am coming up on the 60th anniversary of matriculating at University of Iowa in Iowa City. I was originally a Drama major but between then and when I left to join the US Army Security Agency in 1967 several events occurred that changed my life. I discovered writing and my true vocation. Despite a history of D+’s in English it turned out I could write. I’m dyslexic but I could hear the music. Perhaps it was all of those plays I was in. I went from a Basic Playwrighting class to the Undergraduate Writers Workshop. During those two years, as the Vietnam War heated up, I saw the first draft card burning, indulged in nude photography (them not me) and took up undercover anti-narcotics work.

About ten years ago I wrote a short memoir about all of it, The Perfect Spy, which did not get much traction there because no one would review it. It was too shocking. No one wanted to know that their parents or grandparents actually did “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”.

Kirkus gave me a very nice review.

And now, out of nowhere, Amazon has offered me a “virtual voice” audiobook.  It’s not the robotic voice they used to have but AI enhanced.  Actually sounds human and had features  that allow for variations in pace.  Google gave me something similar for Starmen but it was a long slog and the voice selection was not great. Amazon’s voice are IMO better and easier to work with.  And this is probably the future in small press conversions.  When we did The Shenandoah Spy in 2008 I did a 50-50 deal with Gail Shalan on ACX. That was 40 hours of trial and error for both of us and practically no sales.  It was great for Gail. She went on to become an audiobook superstar.  I can’t afford her now but I’m very proud of having given her that first chance.

I think Virtual Voice may be my solution. No one reads anymore. Audiobooks are a big chunk of the market and Amazon controls the price to a narrow range.  I am hoping that some people will find my adventures as a young man in Iowa worth listening to.  Sixty years is not that long ago.

If you want a science fiction connection, Nicholas Meyer was a classmate.  I had a couple of things to say about him too.

(8) LET’S DO THE TIME LORD AGAIN. “Your Name Engraved in Circular Gallifreyan – Metal, Glow Reactive Paint. Doctor Who Cosplay. Prop Replica. Game Piece. Geek Gift. Pin Badge.”

Solid metal disc with your name translated into Circular Gallifreyan, then laser engraved and filled with Ultra Violet reactive paint. We can engrave this in Copper, Brass, Stainless Steel or Aluminium. If you want a different size metal than the options listed, please message us and we can help 🙂 We’ve also got a Titanium listing of this in our store, see the “Sci-Fi” section.

You can use this link to translate into Gallifreyan: https://adrian17.github.io/Gallifreyan/. I thought “That could be fun” and checked it out. They tell me this is how File 770 reads in that language.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 13, 1994 — The Crow

Thirty-one years ago on the evening, The Crow premiered. I saw it at the theatre and yes, I liked it quite a bit. I’m not a horror fan but I found this quite impressive.  I hadn’t realized until now that it was co-written by John Shirley along with David J. Schow but I’ll get back to that in awhile. 

It was directed by Alex Proyas who would later be nominated for a Hugo at Aussiecon Three (1999) for Dark City. (The Truman Show won that year.) And he’d also later direct I, Robot.

The Crow was produced by Jeff Most, Edward R. Pressman and Grant Hill. Most would produce the sequels, The Crow: City of Angels, The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Pressman was the uncredited executive producer for Conan the Destroyer and Grant Hill was involved in the Matrix films plus V for Vendetta.

Of course, the movie starred Brandon Lee, an actor who gave the film a certain tragic edge by dying. 

The other major roles were held by Ernie Hudson and Michael Wincott. Ernie you know, but Michael Wincott has largely played villains in such films as Alien Resurrection and The Three Musketeers (remember I hold them to be genre). 

It was written by John Shirley along with David J. Schow (lots of forgettable horror in my opinion other than this). Checking IMDB, I see Shirley has written far too many screenplays too list all of them here, so I’ll just note his work on Deep Space Nine, Batman Beyond and Poltergeist: The Legacy. Though definitely not genre, he also wrote one episode of the IMDb Red Shoe Diaries. Really he did. 

His Red Shoes Diaries episode? IMDb says it was, “A beautiful astronaut, trapped in a dying spacecraft a million miles from home, makes tender love for the last time with her co-pilot as she ruminates about the sensual path of her life that led her to the adventure of outer space.”

(The only continuing role in the Wikipedia Red Shoe Diaries was Jake Winters played by David Duchovny in his first true ongoing role as it ran sixty episodes. The framing device is him as a narrator with a back story to explain why he’s introducing and offering closing commentary on these stories. Serling he ain’t though. Yes I did see a few when they originally aired back in the Nineties on Showtime. Softcore would be putting it mildly to describe them.)

The Crow did well at the box office making nearly a hundred million against twenty-four million in costs. it spawned a franchise of sorts as it has three sequels, (The Crow: City of Angels,  The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer) plus a reboot last year, The Crow, which also based  off the 1989 comic book series by James O’Barr. 

So what did the critics think? 

Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune had this to say: “What’s scary about The Crow is the story and the style itself: American Gothic, Poe-haunted nightmare, translated to the age of cyberpunk science fiction, revenge movies and outlaw rock ‘n’ roll, all set in a hideously decaying, crime-ridden urban hell.” 

Caryn James of the New York Times was impressed though not as ecstatic: “It is a dark, lurid revenge fantasy and not the breakthrough, star-making movie some people have claimed. But it is a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth.”

It holds a most exemplary ninety percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

The only place it’s streaming is on Pluto with ads. No, just no.

Yes, there are copies of it on YouTube. As always, any links to those will be deleted with extreme prejudice as it is very much under copyright. Really they will. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS. The Official Steranko Fan Page on Facebook has put out a “Call for Contributions to the Steranko History of Comics, Volume 3 and Updated Editions!”

Comic art fans, collectors, and historians: We are thrilled to announce that Jim Steranko is working on Volume 3 of the acclaimed Steranko History of Comics. As Special Advisor to this project, I’m excited to share that Volumes 1 and 2 will also be updated with new supplemental material, and all three volumes are planned to be published in full color.

We are seeking contributions of rare and original materials related to the Golden Age of Comics, including documents, original covers, photos, color comps, special pages, presentations, character/costume designs, and unpublished images. As with the original Volumes 1 and 2, the focus is on bold, iconic graphics and behind-the-scenes editorial or biographical content of historical significance. Interior panel pages are a lower priority unless they hold unique importance.

If you have art, photos, correspondence, or documents that could enhance this project, your contribution could earn you a contributor credit, a complimentary copy of the book, the benefits of having your material featured in this landmark publication, and Jim’s personal gratitude.

To ensure we reach collectors and fans with access to such materials, please share this call widely within your networks. If YOU have relevant items, contact me directly via Direct Message with a description or a low-resolution scan/photo. If it’s a potential fit, I’ll provide instructions for submitting a high-resolution (minimum 300dpi, full-color) scan to Jim Steranko.

Join us in shaping comics history with the Steranko History of Comics!

(12) FOR SOME VALUES OF FIRST. Inverse remembers:“90 Years Ago, A Forgotten Horror Movie Beat A Monster-Movie Classic To The Punch”.

Although it was technically not the first werewolf movie (that honor goes to the long-lost and now forgotten 1913 short, The Werewolf), Werewolf of London was the first feature-length motion picture in cinema history to deal with the subject of lycanthropy (or “lycanthrophobia,” as it’s called in the film itself). Produced by Universal Pictures, the film starred Henry Hull as Dr. Wilfred Glendon, a world-famous British botanist (apparently botanists could be celebrities back in the day) who ventures into Tibet to find a rare flower, Mariphasa lumina lupina, that allegedly can blossom in moonlight. He does find the flower, but brings home something much worse.

While procuring three sample buds, Glendon is attacked and bitten by an animalistic humanoid creature. He makes it home and creates an artificial source of moonlight in his lab in order to make Mariphasa bloom, after which he’s approached by Dr. Yogami (Warren Oland, creepy), a fellow botanist who claims they met in Tibet. Indeed they did: Yogami was the creature that attacked Glendon, and claims that Glendon will turn into a werewolf himself thanks to Yogami’s bite — unless the plant, which can keep lycanthrophobia in check, blooms successfully….

… Werewolf of London was originally conceived as a vehicle for horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, with the former tagged to play Glendon and the latter cast as Yogami. That would have been a blockbuster combination, but Karloff was already committed to filming Bride of Frankenstein and the studio was hesitant to muck around with that movie’s schedule (Valerie Hobson appeared in both films, incidentally, playing Dr. Frankenstein’s wife in Bride)….

(13) NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN. “Trump’s 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that’s a ‘major step back’” reports Space.com.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been on the prowl within Jezero Crater following its touchdown in February 2021. That car-sized robot has been devotedly picking up select specimens from across the area, gingerly deploying those sealed pick-me-ups on the Red Planet’s surface, as well as stuffing them inside itself. Those collectibles may well hold signs of past life on that enigmatic, dusty and foreboding world.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have for years been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked bits, pieces, and sniffs of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection by state-of-the-art equipment.

But President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint issued on May 2 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) calls for a 24.3 percent reduction to NASA’s top-line funding and could slashing the space agency’s science budget by 47 percent. A casualty stemming from this projected budget bombshell is the Mars Sample Return (MSR) venture.

In fact, MSR is tagged in the White House’s proposed 2026 budget as “grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars,” explaining that MSR is not scheduled to return samples until the 2030s…

(14) PATTON VS. THE VOLCANO. The National Air and Space Museum says it was exciting “That Time We Bombed a Volcano”.

Pilots are advised to avoid volcanic eruptions, but in 1935, a squad of U.S. bombers took a more aggressive approach. 

A crisis erupted (literally) on November 21, when lava spewed from a fissure on the summit of the nearly 14,000-foot-high Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Six days later, a new vent opened on the volcano’s northern flank. The lava flowed downward, pooling at the base of the massive mountain, where it then began edging its way toward the town of Hilo—at the alarming rate of one mile per day.

Thomas Jaggar, the founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, grew increasingly worried after he realized the lava could reach the headwaters of the Wailuku River, which supplied water for Hilo’s 15,000 residents.

Jaggar reasoned that explosives detonated near the eruptive vent would divert the flow of lava advancing toward Hilo by collapsing the lava channels—narrow paths of fluid lava with raised rims formed by cooling magma. 

Thus, on December 26, six Keystone B-3A bombers from the 23rd Bombardment Squadron and four LB-6 light bombers from the 72nd Bombardment Squadron were deployed to Hilo from Ford Island’s Luke Field at Pearl Harbor. The next day, Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton (yes, that Patton) directed the bombers to begin their assault on Mauna Loa. Each carried two 600-pound Mark I demolition bombs, each one loaded with 300 pounds of trinitrotoluene (better known as TNT). Due to the heavy payload, the bombers flew a clearance of just 4,000 feet above the volcano.

A total of 20 of the 600-pound bombs were dropped on the lava channels. Fifteen struck the margins, while five others made direct hits, spraying molten rock in all directions.

Six days later, the eruption ended. Jaggar maintained that the bombers had helped hasten the end of the lava flow. Others are less certain. “Whether the bombing stopped the 1935 lava flow remains unknown, though many geologists today cast doubt,” notes a report later published by the U.S. Geological Survey….

(15) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. Remember the North Bergen High School stage production of Alien four years ago? The person who played the lead is now starting a Hollywood acting career. Marc Scott Zicree gives a two-minute introduction in “Alien! Sigourney Weaver! Ridley Scott! Space Command Studios! North Bergen High School?!”

You can still see the video of the “Alien High School Play — You’ve GOT to See What These Kids Pulled Off!” – with Sigourney Weaver on hand to introduce the performance.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Francis Hamit, Steve Green, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 5/10/25 All Around The Scrollberry Bush, The Monkey Chased The Pixel

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(1) GUARDIAN BOOK REVIEWS. Past Best Fan Writer Hugo winner Abigail Nussbaum, and author of 2025 BSFA Award winner Track Changes penned the Guardian’s latest “The best science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup”. Nussbaum cover The Devils by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz, £25), The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Orbit, £20), Land of Hope by Cate Baum (Indigo Press, £12.99), and A Line You Have Traced by Roisin Dunnett (Magpie, £16.99).

(2) MEETING DEATH SCIENTIFICALLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC’s World Service  has a nifty weekly science programme Unexplained Elements.  This week’s programme was topical with this week’s news of the Pope popping off and the pomp and circumstance ceremony that garnered international attention. It was a topic in which the late Terry Pratchett would have been interested. 

It addressed questions such as when did humans first start burying their dead? The answer seems to be over 100,000 years ago, but this is for anatomically modern humans. Apparently some proto-human species (whose brain capacity was a third of modern humans) may have buried their dead, though the research (currently in peer review) is debatable.  Apparently, the pre-print has been amended to take criticisms into account and while one critic has been convinced, others remain sceptical.

Another topic was that of the biology of graveyards.  Because its ground remains largely untilled, and because of gravestones and the like, there are many micro-environments, and both these factors lead church graveyards have a higher local area biodiversity.

Then there is the issue of a dead person’s digital rights to their social media and online accounts. The European Union’s GDPR is the world’s most robust data protection regulation, though that does not seem to stop firms like Facebook or EventBrite failing to strictly follow it (just look as the small print when you sign up) or even Worldcons who arguably (it would be interesting to test this in court and I could write an essay on this) fail to strictly adhere to its provisions.  Nonetheless, despite GDPR being the world’s gold standard in data protection, the dead have no rights whatsoever under GDPR!

Talking of a dead person’s digital rights (or lack thereof), what of mobile (cell) phones and smartphones, what happens to them when they ‘die’?  Well, fans of Red Dwarf might say that they go to silicon heaven. The reality, however, is for most of them landfill!  Here there are multiple environmental sustainability issues.  All those heavy metals and rare earth elements leech out in landfill causing threats to water tables and other ecotoxicology issues.  And then there is the loss of these elements (which include silver and gold – many kilograms per tonne of mobile phones disposed) to the economy necessitating the mining of replacement elements and the environmental damage that this does.  So the next time a Worldcon tells you that they are ditching recyclable paper from sustainably managed forests (look for the kite mark when buying the paper for publications) don’t accept the Worldcon’s word for it: more greenwash!

It was a fascinating programme. You can access it here.

First up, we delve into the thorny issue of when early humans started to carry out funerary rituals, before turning our attention to graveyards and the life that thrives within these sacred environments.

Next, we are joined Carl Öhman from Uppsala University in Sweden, who reveals what happens to our data when we die and why we should care about it.

Plus, we discuss the precious materials hiding in our old devices, and find out whether animals mourn.

(3) DODGE THE SCAMS. Victoria Strauss points out “Two to Avoid: Book Order Scams and Fake Reviews”. Full details at Writer Beware.

Here are two newish frauds that appear to be on the rise. As with most writing scams these days, they target self-published authors.

The Book Order Scam

I’ve written before about book order scams, in the context of scammers impersonating bookstores such as Barnes & Noble with out-of-the-blue emails promising bulk purchases and big royalties. All the author has to do is pony up thousands of dollars or pounds to cover printing and/or shipping costs (the relevant note here: bookstores do not print the books they sell, and they typically order from the publisher or publishing platform, rather than from the author).

This newer version of the book order scam is somewhat different, arriving not from a bookstore impersonator, but from the self-publishing service provider the writer has hired to publish and/or market their book. That provider isn’t a true self-publishing company, though, but rather one of the many ghostwriting scams that waylay would-be indie authors in order to defraud them….

Fake Reviews

Fake reviews–sometimes just a few lines, sometimes elaborate essays with stars and number rankings–arrive unasked-for, attached to a complimentary email claiming that a book has been “discovered” by book scouts or book evaluators. Or they’re included as part of a pitch for a package of publishing and marketing services, to show how much the service provider believes in the author’s book.

Undoubtedly produced by feeding book blurbs and other info into chatbots, they are essentially bait: affirmation and flattery designed to induce the author to reply, so they can be subjected to aggressive sales pitches for whatever the “reviewer” is selling.

Here are a couple of examples, both sent out by scammers on this list. They’re not just book reviews–they’re PROFESSIONAL book reviews! So much better than just the regular kind….

(4) CHERRYH ANNOUNCEMENT. CJ Cherryh told Facebook followers yesterday she and Jane Fancher won’t be at the Seattle Worldcon – but it’s not the result of any controversy.

Jane and I will not be attending WorldCon despite it being in our state (which some people might want to know)—no controversy, just the expense and the physical buffeting of crowds. While Jane’s got more go-juice than I do, the crowd pressure and distances involved would be pretty exhausting, leaving us sadly low-energy. We’ll still go to friendly ‘little’ cons in driving range, note well, if we know about them!!! and be our brilliant selves, but we’re not up to a full-on WorldCon.

(5) ABOUT THE FEMALE MAN. Farah Mendlesohn’s book Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore is available for preorder from Luna Press Publishing. It will be released in Summer 2026.

Joanna Russ’s writing career was relatively short, running from 1968 to 1987, with a number of essay collections published in the years after that. Her fiction career consists of just six novels and four collections, but each of the novels she published challenged engrained conventions of the genre.

The Female Man was received with shock, horror and vituperation when it was published in 1975. Its fractured narrative, and its direct attack on patriarchy and the straight-jacket of performative femininity, were described as shrill and man-hating. Over the years it emerged as a classic of feminist science fiction, a novel that continues to excite and resonate, and a touchstone for proudly militant feminists.

This exploration of The Female Man offers a close reading of the text, focussing on how the book works, its structures, arguments, humour, and brilliant anger

(6) COMPENSATING FACTORS. “My School Visit was Cancelled. I Fought Back and Won” writers Erica S. Perl in School Library Journal.

As a children’s book author, I love a good mystery. Which is why, last month, after a Virginia elementary school principal abruptly cancelled my visit by email, with no explanation or interest in rescheduling or paying me, I decided to investigate.

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had happened: a parent had complained because of a social media video I had made celebrating Pride month. In it, I mention that Snail, a character in my Whale, Quail, Snail early reader series (illustrated by Sam Ailey), is nonbinary. Most snails are. “It’s a fiction series,” I add, “but that’s a fact.”…

… I wish I could tell you that my story ended amicably with the return of my visit to the school’s calendar. That’s not what happened.

Instead, after I asked for my fee, the principal turned the matter over to the district’s lawyers. The principal then informed the school librarian, who booked my visit, that she might have to pay me out of her own pocket. I told her I would not take her money, no matter what happened. I was extra-outraged that the principal was threatening to make her pay for the “crime” of setting up an author visit.

But my story doesn’t end there. I’m not just a children’s book author. I’m also a former trial lawyer. So instead of walking away muttering about injustice, I spent some quality time with my contract.

That’s right, my author contract. Whenever I am invited to visit a school, my booking agent draws up a contract—and this visit was no exception. According to one clause, if an appearance is cancelled with less than 30 days notice, the school is required to pay my entire fee plus any non-refundable travel expenses. The principal had cancelled on me 28 days before my visit.

And finally, my contract specifies that the contract is governed by the law of the state where I live, not the law of the state where the school is located. So if I wanted to sue for breach of contract, I could simply file papers in my local courthouse (no legal expertise or degree required!).

So, I did. Which is how I got to a different kind of happy ending: the school paid me my fee.

It’s not the win I wanted, because that would have had me standing in front of a gymnasium full of elementary school students. But it is a victory, as I see it, for all authors, especially in this current climate….

(7) KILLER ROBOTS NO LONGER SCIENCE FICTION. [Item by Francis Hamit.] “Unmanned Systems Are Not Revolutionary (But Could Be)” says a post on War Room, hosted by the U.S. Army War College.

Rather than revolutionizing warfare, unmanned systems have emerged as evolutions within the larger information revolution; advancements to be sure, but failing to render conventional militaries obsolete or dramatically reshaping force structures….

(8) PLONK YOUR MAGIC TWANGER. The one answer Smithsonian Magazine knows for sure is the price: “Who Created This Peculiar Painting of a Drooling Dragon? Nobody Knows—but a Museum Just Bought It for $20 Million”. Steven French adds, “Actually the ‘drooling dragon’ looks more like our Patterdale Terrier after he’s spotted the postman!”

Emma Capron, a curator at the museum who was responsible for the acquisition, describes the altarpiece as “wildly inventive” and “full of iconographical oddities,” per the Art Newspaper.

Start with the dragon and its bizarre dog-like face, exaggerated fangs and dripping drool. According to tradition, Satan, disguised as a dragon, swallowed St. Margaret whole. His stomach rejected her and there she appears in the painting, kneeling in prayer, totally unfazed by the event.Next to Margaret, one of the two angels holds a book of song, once thought to be a hymn by the English composer Walter Frye but now identified as musical gibberish. The other angel plucks her mouth harp, “a sound hardly associated with celestial harmony,” as the National Gallery says in the statement….

(9) PEACEMAKER IS BACK. “Peacemaker Season 2 Trailer: John Cena’s DC Superhero Returns” – Variety sets the frame.

… John Cena‘s very R-rated DC superhero has returned in the first trailer for “Peacemaker” Season 2, created by DC Studios co-chief James Gunn. The sophomore season takes place in the rebooted DC Universe, which officially kicked off with Gunn’s animated series “Creature Commando” and continues with his summer tentpole “Superman.” Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl cameo in the trailer and will appear in “Superman.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 10, 1969 — John Scalzi, 56.

By Paul Weimer: I’d read John Scalzi’s blog for years before his fiction. 

I got onto the Scalzi train with his entry in Metatropolis. His story involving a high tech pig farmer had all of the bones of a Scalzi story, from its “I think I know everything” protagonist, to its often snarky sense of humor. While I didn’t fall deeply in love with his work, then or since, I kept reading his work. Redshirts, of course, which still may be my favorite of his novels and stories, helped expand in my mind the metafictional opportunities in science fiction. Lock In is a solid piece of science fictional speculation on how a society might come together and respond to the consequences of a pandemic.  Given that it was written long before Covid…I wonder if Scalzi or, aged fifty six yearswould have reconsidered the novel after the worldwide reaction to the aftermath of the Covid Pandemic. 

Of course the Old Man’s War series is the one that he gets grief for, because it should appeal to the Sad and Rabid Puppies…but it is, in the parlance of today, “too woke”. It’s possible that the existence of such books helped motivate Torgersen and Beale, an irritant to their ideology and worldview (and a counterexample to the idea that Mil-SF must be conservative). Again, I do wonder how Scalzi would write it today, given all that has happened. 

So this is a long way of saying that although it is on my Kindle, I have not yet read When The Moon Hits Your Eye, which seems to have as triggering an idea (the moon turns into cheese. Seriously?) as one can possibly make in the field. But it shows that in the end, Scalzi likes to have fun when writing. He never takes it too seriously, even if he keeps it as rigorous and locked down as the story needs. He’s just telling stories and doing his thing and having the time of his life, and haters can go hang. 

The first time I actually met him in person, he didn’t remember it. He was extremely jet lagged, sitting in a hotel lobby and apparently remembered little from the entire weekend. Due to circumstance (although Scalzi is an excellent DJ, I am told, I am not a dance party goer), I only finally, finally actually got to talk to him at the Glasgow Worldcon. Being part of the photography team did  let me meet and photograph everyone who would hold still.   But did he know who I was? I’m still convinced that he didn’t, and that’s all right. 

John Scalzi’s fiction, too…that’s all right. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) AMAZING STORIES COLLECTION. Amazing Stories: Best of 2024,a collection of  science fiction short stories published by the magazine over the past year, is now available.

Edited by Lloyd Penney, this collection continues Amazing’s nearly century-long tradition of exploring the strange, the speculative, and the sublime.

From lunar labor revolutions to delicate alien diplomacy, these stories represent the vanguard of speculative fiction. Readers will encounter futures both dystopian and dazzling, technologies that reshape identity and time, and characters grappling with the emotional and ethical consequences of scientific progress. Highlights include:

  • “A Short-Lived History of the Stockpiling of Time, in Post-Mono-Heliocentric Space-Times” by K.V.K. Kvas, a mind-bending tale of interstellar economics, identity, and revolt.
  • “Return from Venus” by C.B. Droege, a quiet and touching story about cross-species friendship and the longing for home.
  • “Best Case Scenario” by Susan Oke, a suspenseful diplomatic mission where what you offer—and what you misunderstand—could mean the difference between peace and peril.

With cover art by Hugo Award-winning artist Bob Eggleton and a lineup of diverse voices offering everything from hard science speculation to lyrical philosophical fiction, Amazing Stories: Best of 2024 is a must-have for any SF fan’s collection.

 “Amazing Stories has always been a home for bold, boundary-pushing science fiction,” says Editor-in-Chief Lloyd Penney. “This year’s stories continue that proud legacy—with some of the most challenging, beautiful, and entertaining tales we’ve ever published.”

It is available online at amazingstories.com and in paperback and eBook editions at indie and major retailers worldwide or at this link.

(13) MONSTROUSLY COOL. That’s what your drinks become with an assist from the “Godzilla Ice Mold”.

(14) DAISY RIDLEY’S ZOMBIE ENCOUNTER. JustWatch quotes Daisy Ridley in its Why to Watch feature about her role in the zombie thriller “We Bury the Dead streaming: where to watch online?”

We Bury the Dead is a gripping, emotional thriller set in a world transformed by the undead. In a unique take on the zombie genre, the film follows Ava—a woman tormented by loss—who volunteers with a corpse retrieval unit to search for her missing husband. Set against a surreal yet intimate apocalypse, the story explores love, grief, and the fragile boundaries of what makes us human.

Daisy Ridley says:

The script is beautiful. It’s about grief and watching someone desperately trying to find an answer, even though she doesn’t know what that answer is going to be. The backdrop of the zombies represents this moment for [my character] Ava because she’s neither here nor there emotionally. Ava’s sole purpose is to find her husband. As a means to get to him, she joins the body retrieval unit which volunteers to find people and notify families. The zombies look like our friends and family, so it’s close enough to reality but in a way that doesn’t feel too close. It feels horribly human.

(15) HONEY, I’M HOME! “Soviet-era spacecraft Kosmos 482 plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit” reports AP News.

A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.

Its uncontrolled entry was confirmed by both the Russian Space Agency and European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking. The Russians indicated it came down over the Indian Ocean, but some experts were not so sure of the precise location. The European Space Agency’s space debris office also tracked the spacecraft’s doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station.

It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Experts said ahead of time that some if not all of it might come crashing down, given it was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system’s hottest planet.

The chances of anyone getting clobbered by spacecraft debris were exceedingly low, scientists said….

…Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty….

…After so much anticipation, some observers were disappointed by the lingering uncertainty over the exact whereabouts of the spacecraft’s grave….

A Russian press release says it fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.

(16) YOUR ALIEN NATION. The BBC explains, “More than half your body is not human”.

More than half of your body is not human, say scientists.

Human cells make up only 43% of the body’s total cell count. The rest are microscopic colonists.

Understanding this hidden half of ourselves – our microbiome – is rapidly transforming understanding of diseases from allergy to Parkinson’s.

The field is even asking questions of what it means to be “human” and is leading to new innovative treatments as a result.

“They are essential to your health,” says Prof Ruth Ley, the director of the department of microbiome science at the Max Planck Institute, “your body isn’t just you”….

… But genetically we’re even more outgunned.

The human genome – the full set of genetic instructions for a human being – is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.

But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: “We don’t have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own…

(17) SCIENCE PAPERS WITH UNDISCLOSED AI USE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is controversial to some, in no small part due to large language models (LLMs) and other A.I. (such as image-generating A.I.) using people’s intellectual property (their written or art works) for A.I. and LLM training without permission or recompense.  This is exemplified by the recent debate over the Seattle’s Worldcon use of A.I. (for example, see (1) in the Scroll here).

Similarly, the use of A.I. has controversies in science.  Indeed, a number of leading science journals, such as Nature, frown on the use of A.I. and/or at least ask science authors to declare any use of A.I. in their submissions. The latest news here comes from a news item in this week’s Nature that hundreds of papers have used A.I without disclosure!

Generative A.I. tools such as ChatGPT have quickly transformed academic publishing. Scientists are increasingly using them to prepare and review manuscripts, and publishers have scrambled to create guidelines for their ethical us. Although policies vary, many publishers require authors to disclose their use of A.I….

But science sleuths have identified hundreds of cases in which A.I. tools seem to have been used without disclosure…

…Publishers need to act quickly to resolve issues of dishonest A.I. use.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Rich Lynch, Paul Weimer, Francis Hamit, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]